■'<*«:  3* 


Montana,  University 

A  brief  account  of  the 
third  anniversary  exercises* 


A  BRIEF  flceeaNT  er  the 


THIRD  ANNIVERSARY  EXERCISES 


THE  -^.^; 


J^ontana  UniueF|ily 


At  University  Place, 


HELENA,    MONTANA. 


Ju^e  lM4feh,  '18§3. 


[ith    full    Report  of   the  University  Sermon    by  Rev.  F.  E. 
Brush,  D.  D.  and  the  University  Oration  by  Hon.  W.  F. 
;  Sanders,   and    the    Oration    before    the    Pullman 
Literary  Society  by  Lieutenant  Governor 
A.  C.   l^olkin. 


Publi5l7<?d  by  Ord(?r  of  tl^e  Board  of  Trustees. 


I 


I'L'Kl  ISIIIN 
IKLENA,    MONTA" 


> 


# 


A  BRIEF  AeeeyNT  of  the 
THIRD  ANNIVERSARY  EXERCISES 


H^  OF    THE  -^ 


J^onlana  UniueF^ity 

At  University  Place, 

HELENA,    MONTANA. 


With    full    Report  of    the  University  Sermon    by  Rev.  F.  E. 

Brush,  D.  D.  and  the  University  Oration  by  Hon.  W.  F. 

Sanders,   and    the    Oration    before    the    Pullman 

Literary  Society  by  Lieutenant  Governor 

A.  C.   Botkin. 


Pubiisl^^d  by  Ord(^r  of  t\)e  Board  of  Trustees. 


18!I3. 

State  Publishing  Company. 

helena,  montana, 


BRIEF    SUMMARY 

—  OF    THE  — 
-OF  — 


The  ninth  and  tenth  of  June  were  devoted  to  closing  exami- 
nations for  the  year  and  decorations  for  the  coming  anniversary 
exercises  to  begin  the   nth. 

The  boys  and  girls  deserve  great  commendation  for  the  public 
spirit  displayed  in  sharing  cheerfully  the  work  incident  to  such 
an  occasion.  Indeed,  it  showed  that  the  faculty  had  not  omitted 
this  one  essential  point  in  the  education  of  their  students,  viz.; 
to  promote  the  feeling  of  common  responsibility  and  a  willing- 
ness to  share  cheerfully  duties  of  a  public  nature.  No  teacher 
can  afford  to  ignore  the  opportunity  to  impress  concreetly  lessons 
of  a  vital  social  nature,  which  such  occasions  bring. 

The  rooms  were  tastefully  and  beautifully  decorated,  but  to 
those  who  chanced  to  look  in  occasionally  on  the  busy  workers 
and  were  able  to  understand  something  of  the  spirit,  good  will, 
and  co-operation  that  brought  this  about,  its  beauty  had  a  deeper 
meaning  than  the  mere  spectacular.  To  such,  it  was  an  ex- 
ponent of  system,  organization,  sympathy  with  public  works, 
and  an  index  of  latent  patriotism. 

On  Sunday  morning  at  ii  o'clock.  Presiding  Elder  F.  E. 
Brush  A.  M.,  preached  the  University  Sermon,  Pres't  Tower 
and  Rev.  S.  E.  Snider  assisting  in  the  services.  An  excellent 
audience  of  students,  neighboring  friends  from  the  city  and 
country  listened  eagerly  to  this  most  excellent  discourse,  which 
may  be  found  on  page  7. 

272380 


In  the  afternoon  at  4  o'clock  Rev.  Wm.  G.  Shoppe,  pastor  of 
the  Congregation  il  Church  of  Helena,  preached  the  sermon  be- 
fore the  University  Y.  P.  S.  C.  E.,  Text,  John  III.,  16,  "For 
God  so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave  his  only  begotten  son  that 
whosoever  beheveth  on  him  might  not  perish,  but  have  ever- 
lasting Hfe."  It  was  a  most  excellent  and  learned  gospel  ser- 
mon. He  traced  the  relationship  between  God  and  His  chil- 
dren logically  and  clearly,  and  showed  that  we  fiod  God's  re- 
flected image  in  man's  attributes  We  yield  God  service  in 
serving  our  fellowman.  We  can  know  God  only  to  the  extent 
that  we  cultivate  and  possess  His  attributes. 

The  evening  was  given  to  a  social-religious  meeting  under 
the  auspices  ot  the  University  Y.  P.  S,  C.  E,  The  Epworth 
League  of  St.  Paul's  Church  chartered  the  big  car  and  about 
seventy-five  of  the  E.  L's,  and  members  of  kindred  societies  of 
the  neighboring  churches  came  and  joined  services  with  the 
school.  The  meeting  was  led  by  E.  L.  Mills,  Pres't  of  the  Uni- 
versity Y.  P.  S.  C.  E.  The  subject  was  "Our  Young  Lives 
for  Christ."  It  was  a  good  meeting,  well  filled  with  songs 
and  counsels  and  testimonies  and  prayers  and  good  resolu- 
tions. When  young  men  and  women  thus  band  themselves  to- 
gether and  make  their  common  ideal  of  life  the  highest,  then 
the  future  is  full  of  possibilities  and  life  is  full  of  meaning. 

On  Monday  evening,  Lieutenant  Governor  Botkin  delivered 
the  address  before  the  PuLman  Literary  Society.  His  subject 
was  "The  Unwritten  Law."  It  is  faint  praise  to  say  that  it  was 
a  masterful  effort.  Deep,  philosophical,  yet  so  popular  that  he 
held  the  closest  attention  of  the  entire  audience  throughout 
the  hour.  See  page  16.  The  school  audience  was  reinforced 
by  two  car  loads  of  city  friends. 

After  the  lecture  the  society  and  friends  repaired  to  the  din- 
ing hall  for  the  first  annual  banquet  of  the  society.  From  the 
standpoint  of  toothsome  viands  and  savory  toasts,  it  was  a  suc- 
cess. Good  taste,  good  cheer  and  good  wit  seemed  to  radiate 
from  every  table  and  beam  from  every  face. 

On  Tuesday  occurred  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Board  of 
Trustees.     A  very  acceptable  report  of  the  current  running  ex- 


penses  was  made  by  Pres't  Tower  and  plans  were  set  on  foot 
for  canceling  the  old  debt.  Prof,  Abbott's  resignation  was  ac- 
cepted and  a  hearty  testimonial  of  the  Professor's  scholarship 
and  ch  racter  given  by  unanimous  vote  of  the  Board.  Prof. 
Ryder,  previously  in  the  school,  but  who  has  spent  the  past  year 
at  Chicago  University,  was  elected  to  the  chair  of  Ancient  Lan- 
guages, vice  Prof.  Abbott. 

In  the  afternoon  of  Tuesday,  Prof.  Nunvar,  who  has  charge 
of  the  musical  department  of  the  school,  gave  a  most  excellent 
concert.  He  was  assisted  by  Miss  Bessie  Stevens  who  has  giv- 
en vocal  lessons  in  the  school  during  the  year. 

The  evening  was  devoted  to  the  prize  declamation  contest. 
Five  girls  and  six  boys,  elected  by  their  mates,  were  the  com- 
petitors. A  first  and  second  prize  were  offered  to  the  girls  and 
boys  respectively,  the  girls  competing  with  each  other,  and  the 
boys  with  each  other.  A  crowded  house  greeted  the  young 
contestants  Reverends  Brush,  Shoppe  and  Holmes  were  ap- 
pointed judges. 

The  programme  was  as  follows: 

— MUSIC— 

1.  Edward  L.  Mills,  Bozeman Lafayette 

2.  Ina  Craven,  Philbrook Mona's  Water 

3.  Carl  B.  Hard,  University  Place Foe's  Raven 

4.  Rose  Gowin,  Bozeman The  Bridal  Feast 

—  MUSIC  — 

5.  C.  N.  Davidson,  Anaconda Death  of  Garfield 

fj.    Marg.ry  Jacoby,  Highwood Mary,  Queen  of  Scots. 

7.  W.  D.  Tipton,  W.  S.  Springs Speech  of  Patrick  Henry. 

8.  Laura  E.  Fitch,  Sheridan The  Ringing  ol  the  Bell. 

— MI'SIC— 

9.  n.  C.Chambers,  University  Place Burning  of  Chicago. 

10.    Hattie  E.  Dickinson,  Missoula The  Stag*  Kide. 

IL    Philo.  W.  Haynes,  Miles  City Declaration  of  IndependiMice. 

—MUSIC  — 

Congratulations  were  earned  by  all.  It  was  conceded  to  be 
the  best  contest  in  the  history  of  the  school. 

On  Wednesday  morning  at  eleven  o'clock.  President  Tower 
opened  the  last  session  of  exercises  by  calling  on  Rev.  Bell,  of 
Helena,  to  lead  in  prayer.  Hon.  W.  F.  Sanders,  Pres't  of  the 
Board  of  Trustees,    then  delivered  the  University  oration  to  a 


crowded  house.  It  was  an  effort  of  which  the  Senator  himself 
might  well  be  proud.  We  trust  that  every  reader  of  this  paper 
will  read  this  oration  carefully.  It  may  be.  found  on  page  32. 
Mrs.  Monroe  and  Miss  Stevens  then  favored  us  with  vocal 
solos. 

Dr.  Tower  then  announced  the  prizes  as  follows:  For  the 
highest  scholarship  and  deportment,  a  saddle  pony  presented  by 
Mr.  James  R.  Johnson  to  Miss  Margery  Jacoby  of  High- 
wood.  Her  grade  was  96  per  ceiit.  Miss  Ida  Fryett  took  sec- 
ond rank  with  a  grade  of  95  7-15  per  cent  and  Miss  fna  Craven 
took  third  rank  a  grade  of  94  25-32  per  cent. 

The  $25  cash  prize  offered  by  Elder  Jacob  Mills  for  the  best 
English  Composition  was  awarded  to  Edward  L.  Mills  for  an 
essay  on  "The  Ethics  of  Politics."  Carl  B.  Hard  and  Miss 
Margery  Jacoby  receiving  honorable  mention.  There  were 
six  contestants.  Mr.  Hard's  essay  was  a  poem  of  considerable 
merit  and  promise;  subject,  "Man,  A  Vision."  Miss  Jacoby  wrote 
on  "The  Greeks."  For  the  best  declamation  Mr.  Haynes  took 
first  prize  for  the  boys  and  Miss  Dickinson  for  the  girls.  Mr. 
Tipton  received  second  prize  for  the  boys  and  Miss  Fitch  for 
the  girls. 

The  company  then  repaired  to  the  dining  hall  for  refresh- 
ments which  very  interesting  exercise  was  concluded  by  toasts 
and  a  general  social. 

Among  the  guests  of  the  institution  during  the  week  were 
Elder  and  Mrs.  Mills  of  Bozeman  whose  son  Edward  has  been 
with  us  for  two  years  past,  Mrs.  Gaddis,  of  Fort  Logan,  whose 
two  children,  Charley  and  Lida,  have  been  in  school  all  the  year, 
Revr  Holmes,  of  Butte,  Rev.  G.  D.  King  of  I>ozeman,  Rev.  W. 
W.  Van  Orsdel  of  Great  Falls,  Miss  Foster  of  Omaha  and  Rev. 
Wilder  Nutting  of  Townsend. 

The  new  electric  car  Hne  added  greatly  to  the  occasion.  It  is 
safe  to  say  that  the  outlook  for  the  school  is  brighter  than  ever 
before. 


University  Sermon 


BY    REV.    F.  "E.    BRUSH,    D.    D. 


DELIVERED    SUNDAY.  JUNE    11,1893. 

"L)-|-/-^xT  ^  /—  .  J  ^^  "Iron  Sharpeneth  Iron;  so  a  Man  Sharp- 
■■^^^*^»  /'/"  eneth  the  Countenance  of  his  Friend." 
We  have  here  a  striking  and  pecuhar  phrasing  of  a  vital 
truth.  This  truth  is  that  a  certain  precious  culture  results  to 
man  from  the  contact  and  collision  of  soul  with  soul.  As  'iron 
sharpeneth  iron,'  to  use  the  picturesque  putting  of  the  Proverb 
writer,  so  mind  sharpens  mind,  soul  polishes  soul,  spirit  perfects 
spirit  in  that  wonderful  experience  which  we  call  human  inter- 
course. This,  as  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  thought  of  the  sacred 
writer;  one  stimulates  the  other  ,  poHshes  himself  by  mutual  spi- 
ritual intercourse  and  friction  with  his  fellow,  and  each  contributes 
by  such  an  interchange  of  personal  peculiarities  to  the  spiritual 
development  of  both?  The  thought  may  be  still  further  drawn 
out,  'A  man  by  himself  is  no  man;  he  is  dull,  he  is  very  blunt; 
but  if  his  fellow  come  and  quicken  him  by  his  presence,  speech 
and  example,  he  is  much  more  comfortable,  skilful  and  better 
than  he  was  when  he  was  alone.'  In  a  sense  that  is  very 
broad  and  indeed  universal,  'it  is  not  good  for  man  to  be 
alone.*  In  a  state  of  isolation  man  vegetates,  withers  and 
decays.  It  is  only  through  intimate  association  with  his  kind 
that  he  comes  to  the  finest  flower  of  his  culture  and  to  the 
divinest  perfecting  of  his  nature.  The  Bible  has  a  wonderful 
way  of  laying  hold  of  the  most  vitalizing  and  masterful  energies 
of  human  culture  and  impressing  them  into  the  service  of  reli- 
gion for  the  consummation  of  man.  So,  too,  there  is  not  a  force 
in  the  natural  world  freighted  with  blessing  to  man  which  may 
not  be  utiHzed   for  supreme  spiritual  weal.       Thus  it  is  in  this 


8 

particular  realm.  This  principle  of  the  friction  of  man  upon 
man,  which  yields  largest  and  richest  results  in  all  the  lower 
domains  of  human  endeavor,  is  employed  to  secure  the  divinest 
issues  in  the  shaping,  refining,  burnishing  and  crowning  of 
spiritual  character.  Before  following  this  principle  into  the 
spiritual  sphere,  let  us  note  some  of  its  applications  upon  lower 
planes.  And,  first,  let  us  witness  its  operation  on  the  field  of  men- 
tal training.  It  is  the  severe  and  ceaseless  rubbing  of  mind 
against  mind  which  imparts  strength,  hardness,  brilliancy  to  the 
mental  powers.  One  class  of  minds  realize  this  in  communion 
with  God  in  nature.  They  see  the  Infinite  Mind  disclosed  in  the 
material  universe  and,  through  collision  of  their  finite  mind  with 
His,  thought^becomes  quickened  and  opulent,  spirit  aspires,  the 
whole  being  is  lifted  up  and  illumined.  So  Kepler  pauses  in  his 
scientific  scrutiny  of  the  heavens  and  in  spiritual  ecstasy  exclaims 
with  loftiest  emotion,  'O  God,  I  think  thy  thoughts  after  thee.' 
The  poet  Wordsworth  beautifully  describes  the  "consecrating 
effects  of  early  dawn,"  in  verse  that  mirrors  the  feelings  of  his 
own,soui. 

What  soul  was  his  when  from  the   naked   top 

Of  some  bold  head-land  he  beheld  the  Sun 

Rise  up   and  bathe  the  world  in  light.      He  looked — 

Ocean   and  earth,  the   solid  frapie  of  earth 

And  ocean's  liquid  mass,  beneath  him  lay 

In   gladness  and  deep  joy.     The  clouds  were  touched. 

And  in  their  silent  faces  did  he  read 

Unutterable  love.       Sound   needed   none, 

Nor  any  voice  of  joy;  his  spirit  drank 

The  spectacle;    sensation,  soul  and  form 

All  melted  into  him.       They  swallowed  up 

His  animal  being.       In  them  did  he  live. 

And  by  them  did  he  live;  they  were  his  life. 

In  such  access  of  mind,  in  such  high  hour 

Of  visitation  from  the  living  God. 

Thought  was  not;  in  enjoyment  it  expired; 

No  thanks  he  breatheJ,  he  proffered  no  request; 

Rapt  into  still  communion  that  transcends 

The  imperfect  offices  of  pra3'er  and  praise, 

His  mind  was  a  thanksgiving  to  the  power 

That  made  him;  it  was  blessedness  and  love." 


Thus  it  was  with  a  dear  friend  of  mine  who,  coming  out  upon 
Inspiration  Point  in  the  Grand  Canyon  of  the  Yellowstone,  fell 
upon  her  knees  and  wept  and  worshipped  when  confronted  with 
the  majesty  and  beauty  of  God's  thought  as  materially  expressed 
in  the  towering,  many  colored  walls  of  that  magnificent  nature- 
temple.  So  it  is  as  we  come  into  vital  touch  with  God's  mind 
in  material  manifestation.  The  contact  deepens,  broadens,  en- 
riches our  mental  energies,  elevates  and  enlarges  the  heart,  fills 
the  spirit  with  a  vision  whose  rare  and  wondrous  beauty  trans- 
forms the  whole  being  and  exalts  it  to  perfect  unison  with  the 
Divine.  Another  class  of  minds  will  realize  this  mental  sharp- 
ening in  the  silent  library  through  solitary  and  absorbed  study 
of  the  great  masters  of  thought.  Robertson,  of  Brighton,  one  of 
the  brightest,  strongest,  most  suggestive  and  fertilizing  English 
preachers  of  this  century,  used  to  speak,  of  'lighting  his  torch  at 
another  man's  fire.'  •  He  meant  that  the  friction  of  other  minds 
against  his  own  caused  a  mental  glow,  that  brightened  and  in- 
tensified into  a  flaming  splendor  all  his  own.  There  are  thinkers 
who  act  as  an  electric  stimulus  upon  our  mental  organism  mak- 
ing it  coruscate  and  burn.  In  my  own  personal  reading  I  find  it 
extremely  difficult  to  finish  one  of  Emerson's  essays.  Here 
some  thought  grips  my  mind  and  carries  it  far  afield;  there 
another  thought  wakens  slumbering  fancies  of  my  own,  strikes 
them  into  fire  and  away  they  soar  into  the  empyrean.  So  it  is 
that  Emerson,  Carlyle  and  Ruskin,  through  their  inspirational 
power,  have  quickened  and  fecundated  our  best,  sanest  and 
most  influential  modern  thought.  This  is  the  peculiar  and  pre- 
eminent power  of  the  Bible.  It  is  surcharged  with  a  vivid, 
rushing,  flaming  life,  that  vitalizes  and  impassionates  all  who 
receive  its  impact.  Unchain  the  Bible  and  discharge  its  full 
energy  upon  the  mind  and  heart  of  the  humble  monk  of  Erfurt 
historically  and  you  have  Luther  and  the  Reformation.  Liber- 
ate this  Book  and  let  it  operate  according  to  the  scientific  law  of 
the  'survival  of  the  fittest'  and  you  find  it  demonstrated  that  this 
Word  of  God  has  ever  awakened  and  cultured  the  mental  and 
moral  life  of  the  most  civilized,  progressive  and  commanding 
nations  on  the  face  of  the  earth.      The  skeptical  cant  about  the 


lO 


cramping  influence  of  the  Bible  upon  human  thought  is  the  most 
arrant  nonsense  and  woeful  humbuggery  ever  perpetrated  upon 
a  patient. and  suffering  world.  The  Bible — it  is  the  book  of  high 
vision,  of  masterful  and  invigorating  thought  and  mind-com- 
pelling power;  it  is  the  constant  companion  and  unceasing  in- 
spiration of  the  world's  greatest  and  noblest  thinkers.  Where 
the  Bible  is  enthroned  you  will  infallibly  find  freedom  and  power 
of  mental  movement,  moral  purity  and  genuine  progress. 

But  for  ordinary  people  this  sharpening  of  nature  is  best 
realized,  perhaps,  through  contact  with  living,  embodied  per- 
sonahties  of  genius  and  power.  These  God-gifted  persons  are 
instinct  with  vitality,  throbbing  and  thrilling  with  electric  influ- 
ence, and  those  who  touch  them  feel  the  inflow  of  the  mystic 
tire  and  are  awakened  to  abounding  and  victorious  life.  It  is 
this  power  that  creates  and  qualifies  the  great  teachers  of  the 
ivorld.  Education  means  the  drawing  out,  the  stimulating,  of 
the  latent  powers  of  the  soul,  and  the  moulding  of  the  life  to 
divine  ideals.  Education  is  not  the  cramming  of  facts  and  laws 
into  a  pupil's  mind;  it  is  begetting  and  fostering  the  impulse  to 
intellectual  activity;  it  is  teaching  the  proper  use  of  the  mental 
faculties;  it  is  the  placing  of  life  on  the  spiritual  plane.  So,  our 
teachers  must  not  be  wooden  and  mechanical;  they  must  be 
vital  and  inspirational. 

President  Garfield  made  a  wise  and  true  remark  when  he  said 
that  the  best  university  for  him  would  be  a  log  with  Mark  Hop- 
kins on  one  end  and  the  student  at  the  other.  I  think  the  best 
college  work  is  often  done  in  our  smaller  institutions  where  the 
faculty  is  of  Hmited  number,  where  the  appliances  may  be 
meager,  but  where  the  teachers  are  men  and  women  of  power 
to  arouse  and  fertilize  the  mental  and  spiritual  lite  of  the  students. 
There  is  hardly  another  educational  institution  in  this  country 
that  has  "turned"  out  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  students  so 
many  leading  and  influential  men  in  the  pulpit,  in  the  press,  in 
statesmanship,  in  scientific  research  as  our  own  Wesleyan  Uni- 
versity, at  Middletown,  Connecticut.  With  a  small  corps  of  in- 
structors, a  brief  roster  of  students,  limited  library  and  appar- 
atus, as  compared  with  many  other  colleges   and  universities,  it 


II 

has  accomplished  magnificent  and  unsurpassed  work  in  the  train- 
ing of  great  men.  I  explain  this  phenomenon  thus:  the  students 
were  not  given  over  to  the  care  of  tutors  young  and  inexperi- 
enced, but  were  brought  into  closest  and  most  fruitful  contact 
with  teachers  of  pre-eminent  ability,  stimulating  brain  power, 
and  morally  moulding  energy. 

The  best  work  is  done  in  German  universities  to-day  in  the 
informal  meetings  which  the  professors  hold  with  a  few  students 
specially  interested  in  their  particular  line  of  work.  The  alert 
and  eager  student  there  comes  into  kindling  touch  with  the 
vast  learning,  lorty  ideals,  personal  power  of  the  professor 
and  thereby  receives  a  stimulus  which  he  justly  counts  one 
of  the  highest  benefits  of  his  whole  university  career. 

Out  of  the  rubbing  of  mind  upon  mind  will  ever  come  light 
and  power. 

This  great  principle  operates  also  in  the  field  of  business  en- 
terprise. The  sovereigns  of  the  commercial  world  are  found 
in  the  great  cities,  not  only  because  there  are  offered  amplest 
spheres  for  the  most  universal  and  commanding  genius,  but 
also,  and  more  largely,  because  the  rubbing  of  mind  upon  mind 
in  the  great  concourse  of  bright  and  progressive  men  centered 
in  the  city,  sharpens  the  wits,  quickens  the  intelligence,  broadens 
and  clarifies  the  vision,  yields  scope  and  courage  for  mammoth 
undertakings. 

But  it  seems  to  me  that  this  principle  finds  supreme  illustration 
in  the  spiritual  sphere.  The  incarnation  is  the  largest  concrete 
picturing  of  this  truth.  "In  human  form  Jesus  Christ,  the  wis- 
dom of  God,  the  power  of  God,  the  love  of  God,  came  close  to 
sinful  men  without  awing  or  alarming  them;  and  when  they 
touched  Him  grace  flowed  from  His  lips  and  life  to  bless  them." 
It  is  the  touch  of  Christ  upon  our  souls  that  raises  them  from 
the  death  of  sin,  that  quickens  them  into  life  and  makes  them  bur- 
geon and  bloom  in  beautv-  His  thoughts  dominate  ours.  His 
ideals  allure  us  and  quench  in  their  full-orbed  splendor  our  dim 
and  earth-born  ones;  the  majesty  of  His  moral  might  subdue  us. 
So  in  lesser  measure  is  it  in  our  contact  with  Christ-filled  human 
souls.     We  often  speak  of  the  "means  of  grace,"  and  we   usu- 


12 


ally  refer  to  the  Bible  and  its  study,  the  church   and  its   various 
services  and  ministries,  and  kindred  matters.     We  need  to  rea- 
Hze    that,  of    all    the    practical    "means  of    grace,"    among  the 
mightiest  are  people  and  our  association  with  them.     In  spiritual 
commingling  with  living  souls,  as  one  has  said,  "we  are  impressed, 
wrought  upon  and  influenced.       Indeed,  we  receive  the   larger 
portion  of  our  divine  gifts  through  human  hearts  and  lives.     We 
sometimes  overlook  this  and  think  of    God  as  reaching  down 
His  mercies  to  us  directly  and  imn:ediately  without  the  interven- 
tion of  mediators,  but  closer  thought   shows   us  that  ordinarily 
this  is  not  the  way  our  spiritual  good  things  come  to  us.     Ordi- 
narily God  passes  His  gifts  to  us  through  others."     So  it  is  that 
another's  faith  strengthens   mine,   anothers   love  fans  mine  into 
intenser  glow.     "We  learn  many  of  our  best   lessons   from  our 
associations  with  our  fellowmen."       It  is  truth   incarnated  and 
illumined  in  life  that  most  powerfully  sways  us.       "Every  frag- 
ment of  moral  beauty  in  a  regenerated  life  is   a   mirroring  of  a 
little  fragment,  at  least,  of  the  image  of  God  on  which  our  eyes 
may  gaze."     Every  Christ-charged  life  is  a  battery  of  regener- 
ating power,  a  fountain  of  holy  influences,  a  school  of  spiritual 
instruction.     History,  sacred  and  secular,  is  crowded  with  illus- 
trative instances.       Moses  and  Joshua,  Elijah  and  Ehsha,  Christ 
and  The    Twelve    will    at    once    suggest    themselves    as    cases 
illuminating  the  principle  before  us.       Aside  from  special  divine 
endowment  who  shall  say  how  much  of  the  success  of  the  lesser 
men  is  due  in  each  instance   to  their   close   association  with  the 
Masters,  receiving  thereby  nobler  ideals,  spiritualized  ambitions, 
broadened  natures,  enriched  experiences,  hightened  qualification 
for  abounding  and  epochal  work. 

We  may  find  further  illustration  m  our  own  day  and  nearer 
home  m  the  interesting  relations  of  David  Livingstone  and 
Henry  M.  Stanley.  You  know  the  story.  The  great  hearted 
missionary  was  lost  in  the  mazes  of  the  "dark  continent." 
Long  time  elapsed  without  any  tidings  reaching  the  civilized 
world  from  the  grand  old  hero.  At  last,  as  a  piece  of  mere  busi- 
ness enterprise,  Stanley  is  commissed  by  two  great  newspapers 
to  proceed  to  Africa  and  find  Living-stone.       American   pluck. 


13 

daring  and  wit  succeed.  The  brave  and  saintly  soul,  who  has 
been  followed  by  the  prayers  and  sympathies  of  universal 
Christendom  and  whose  supposed  loss  has  caused  sincere  and 
widespread  grief,  is  found.  When  Stanley  came  into  the  pres- 
ence of  that  reverend  and  splendid  man  who  was  lovingly  lavish- 
ing his  affluent  and  gifted  nature  upon  the  ignorant  and  imbruted 
denizens  of  darkest  Africa,  it  was  to  be  expected  that  a  deep 
and  abiding  impression  would  be  made  upon  the  ardent  spirit 
of  the  younger  man.  This  is  what  the  young,  ambitious, 
worldly,  "rustling"  newspaper  man  thought  of  that  magnificent 
old  Christian  hero;  "His  religion  is  not  of  the  theoretical  kind,  but 
is  a  constant,  earnest,  sincere  practice.  For  four  nronths  and 
four  days  I  lived  with  him  in  the  same  house,  or  in  the  same 
boat  or  in  the  same  tent,  and  I  never  found  a  fault  in  him.  Each 
day's  life  with  him  added  to  my  admiration  of  him."  This  in- 
timate association  with  Livingstone  in  the  experiences  of  com- 
monplace, every  day  life  wielded  a  spiritual  mfiuence  that  the 
keen,  shrewd  man  of  the  world  could  not  blink  or  evade,  and 
made  Henry  M.  Stanley  a  disciple  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  m- 
estimable  value  of  his  life  and  its  marvelous  services  in  enlight- 
ening and  liberating  the  dark  and  manacled  continent  must  be 
credited  to  the  regenerating  and  inspirational  influence  of  the 
Christ  in  Livingstone. 

Mark  Guy  Pearse,  the  distinguished  Wesleyan  preacher  of 
London,  gives  a  touching  illustration  of  the  power  of  people  as 
a  "means  of  grace"  in  an  experience  garnered  when  he  was  a 
student.     I  will  present  it  in  his  own  words: 

"When  I  was  a  student  our  grand  old  professor  of  theology 
was  a  man  for  whom  we  had  a  great  veneration — simple,  child- 
like, holy — none  had  ever  known  him  to  be  anythmg  else,  and 
that  gracious  and  unfailing  sweetness  and  beauty  were  to  us  his 
natural  disposition.  To  such  a  man  it  was  no  trouble  to  be 
always  blameless.  But  one  day  it  chanced  that  a  student  came 
in  late  to  the  class,  and  pushed  his  way  to  the  seat.  The  pro- 
fessor stopped  to  ask  gently  why  he  was  late.  The  answer 
was  given  somewhat  flippantly,  an  excuse  that  aggravated  the 
offense.     Instantly  the  professor,  who  had  been  sitting,  rose  up 


to  his  full  height,  until  the  big,  massive  man  seemed  to  fill  the 
room,  stretching  out  a  trembling  and  terrible  forefinger  at  the 
offender.  The  great  shaggy  eyebrows  were  lifted,  and  the 
lightnings  shot  from  his  eyes.  Like  thunder  rolled  the  words 
from  his  lips:  'Leave  the  room,  sir.'  We  started  in  amazement 
almost  in  fright.  The  culprit  crouched  away  from  his  place  and 
left,  while  that  majestic  figure  stood  there  all  ablaze  with  wrath. 
The  door  was  shut.  Then  again  the  professor  sat  in  his  chair. 
But  the  storm  was  done.  With  a  trembling  voice  he  read  the 
discourse,  seeming  almost  unable  to  go  on.  After  the  lecture 
we  left  only  to  gather  in  groups  and  discuss  this  wonderful 
thing.  Presently  came  a  message  that  the  offender  was  wanted; 
and  be  hastened  to  the  irate  professor,  expecting  an  angr}'  repri-. 
mand.     Hut  there  sat  the  old  man  in  tears. 

'My  brother.'  he  sobbed,  'will  you  forgive  me?' 

*No,  sir;  indeed,  it  is  I  who  should  apologize,'  said  the  student 
overwhelmed. 

'No,  no,  I  am  older.  Will  you  forgive  me?  I  am  very,  very 
sorry     Say  that  you  forgive  me ' 

The   student  managed  to  get  out  a  word  or  two. 

'And  you  must  tell  all  the  students  that  I  have  apologized,  will 
you.?' 

And  again  there  was  a  pause  for  the  promise. 

♦Now,'  said  the  noble  old  man,  'I  will  go  and  ask  God  to  for- 
give me.' 

Nothing  in  all  that  life, -fiothing  in  all  his  words,  ever  did  us 
so  much  good  as  that.  We  knew  then  under  that  gentleness 
and  beauty  what  fires  buined;  and  every  man  of  us  had  a  new 
faith  and  a  new  hope  and  a  new  love." 

Thus  it  is  with  all  human  experience.  Highest,  holiest  truth 
comes  to  us  most  vividly,  contagiously  and  transformingly  through 
the  supreme  object-lesson  of  incarnation.  Be  it  ours,  teachers, 
students,  friends,  to  incarnate  the  Ideal  Man  so  that  our  lives  in 
loving  friction  shall  "sharpen"  to  finer  issues  and  spiritulize  into 
diviner  beauty  the  countenances  of  the  friends  we  fondly  cherish; 
and  thus  shall  the  universal  human  life  be  lifted  more  fully  fnto 
the  light  and  keyed  more   perfectly  to  the    celestial    harmonies. 


15 

In  closingj  this  hour  ol  spiritual  coiiinuiiiitMi  I  hicathc  thr  I'lUtu'St 
prayer  thai  this  golden  scntuiuMit  may  doininati'  ami  iuspiri' 
every  heart  here  present: 

"May  every  soul  that  touches  mine- 
lie  it  the  slightest  contact — gel  therefrom  some  good. 
Some  liule  grace,  one  kiiull\-   thought. 
One  asjiiration  yet  unfelt,  one  bit  of  courage 
For  the  darkening  sky,  one  gleam  of  faith 
To  brave  the  thickening  ills  of  life, 

One  glimpse  of  brighter  skies  beyond  the  gatlu'ring  mists 
To  make  this  life  worth  while 
And  heaven  a  surer  heritage." 


ADDI?E§§ 


delivered  Before  the  |?allman  Literary  goeiety, 

Jane  is  i86)3, 

BY  LIEUT.  GOVERNOR  A.  C.  BOTKIN. 


Mr.  President  and  Members  of  the  Ptillman  Literary  Society : 

Every  rock  emboweled  in  the  earth  has  its  story  to  tell  of  the 
gradual  growth  of  a  shapeless  mass  of  matter  into  a  world  of 
light  and  beauty.  Upon  the  different  strata,  as  upon  the  leaves 
of  a  book,  are  written  the  mighty  changes  since  creation's  birth; 
so  the  jurisprudence  of  a  country  is  its  best  history.  It  is  not 
so  in  the  sense  that  regards  history  as  a  catalogue  of  battles  and 
a  schedule  of  dynasties;  but  in  that  which  looks  upon  it  as 
a  panorama  of  the  successive  conditions  through  which  a  people 
move  from  barbarism  to  a  ripe  civilization,  and  sometimes  back- 
ward to  another  form  of  savager3^  When  Fletcher  of  Saltoun 
said,  "Let  me  make  the  ballads  of  a  nation  and  I  care  not  who 
makes  its  laws,"  he  uttered  a  very  pretty  epigram,  but  a  flagrant 
fallacy.  He  might  have  t^aid  that  the  ballads  make  the  laws,  or 
that  the  laws  make  the  ballads,  but  the  real  truth  is  that  the 
people  make  the  ballads  and  the  laws.  The  laws  of  a  nation 
are  the  outgrowth  of  its  manners  and  customs;  the  unfailing 
exponent  of  its  virtue,  intelligence  and  advancement. 

Law  cannot  be  other  than  a  growth.  It  has  never  occurred 
that  a  code  has  been  tr:insplanted  and  imposed  upon  a  people  by 
the  exercise  of  human  authority.  Perhaps  the  most  complete 
and  enduring  conquest  in  history  was  that  of  England  by  the 
Normans,  but  the  laws  of  the  conquered  Saxons  survived  to  be 
the  basis  of  the  jurisprudence  that  obtains  to-day  with  the  Eng- 


17 

lish  family  upon  three  continents.  The  laws  of  the  American 
Indians  are  still  observed  among  the  different  tribes,  and  will 
doubtless  continue  to  be  so  long  as  the  tribal  condition  remains. 
It  is  conceivable  that  a  strange  language  might  be  forced  upon 
a  people  in  the  course  of  a  generation  or  two;  but  it  is  not  con- 
ceivable that  an  entirely  new  system  of  jurisprudence  could  be 
imposed  upon  a  people  by  the  utmost  expedients  of  tyranny. 
The  laws  of  a  people  are  simply  a  form  and  manifestation  of 
their  life,  growing  with  their  growth,  changing  with  their 
changes,  but  beyond  the  power  of  violence  or  oppression  to 
sunder  or  replace. 

After  selecting  the  subject  of  this  address  I  consulted  Pom- 
eroy's  admirable  treatise  on  Municipal  Law,  and  there  with  a 
mass  of  valuable  information  and  suggestion,  I  found  a  protest 
against  the  term  "Unwritten  Law."  Undoubtedly  it  is  lacking 
in  accuracy,  though  it  has  abundant  sanction  in  usage.  Much 
of  what  we  call  "The  Unwritten  Law"  is  in  fact  written  in  the 
decisions  of  the  courts  and  the  works  of  writers.  Its  definitive 
feature  is  that  it  is  not  embodied  in  formal  statutes. 

To  convey  a  general  idea  of  its  nature,  and  to  illustrate  by 
comparatively  recent  examples  its  growth  and  adjustability  to 
ever  changing  conditions — behold  the  purpose  of  this  brief  ad- 
dress. 

To  realize  clearly  what  is  "The  Unwritten  Law,"  the  best 
course  perhaps  is  to  determine  what  it  is  not;  and  to  this  end  it 
may  be  desirable  to  glance  hastily  at  the  codes  of  which  men- 
tion is  found  in  history.  The  Roman  Law  of  the  Twelve 
Tables  is  the  first  to  be  considered,  and  it  takes  us  back  to  a  time 
four  and  a  half  centuries  before  Christ.  Previous  to  that  the 
laws  of  Rome  had  consisted  of  the  enactments  of  the  senate 
and  the  decisions  of  popular  gatherings.  They  were  not  col- 
lected, and  were  not  even  formulated  with  any  degree  of  pre- 
cision, and  their  defects  became  obvious  even  at  a  time  when 
the  Roman  people  were  not  far  removed  from  primitive  condi- 
tions. In  the  year  452  B.  C  ,  a  commission  was  sent  to  Greece 
in  the  hope  of  gaining  from  the  maturer  civilization  of  that 
country  the   materials   for   a  general   system   of  jurisprudence. 


Upon  their  return  a  decemvirate  was  constituted  and  the  product 
of  their  labors,  embodied  in  twelve  articles  or  titles,  came  to  be 
known  as  the  Twelve  Tables.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that 
they  dealt  with  nearly  all  the  subjects  of  legislation  and  adjudi- 
cation that  exist  to-day,  and  in  addition  to  these  they  undertook 
to  prescribe  how  the  child  should  be  reared  from  his  birth,  and 
how  the  dead  should  be  interred.  Some  of  ^he  provisions  are 
very  significant  of  the  low  state  of  civilization  of  which  they 
were  the  product.  A  debtor  refusing  to  pay  his  debt  could  be 
taken  home  by  his  creditor,  where  he  could  be  tied  by  the  neck 
or  have  irons  put  on  his  feet  to  the  weight  of  fifteen  pounds.  "If 
the  debtor  be  insolvent  to  several  creditors  let  his  body  be  cut 
in  pieces"  on  the  third  market  day.  It  may  be  cut  into  more  or 
fewer  pieces,  says  the  obliging  statute;  and  really  it  doesn't 
seem  that  it  could  have  made  any  considerable  difference  to  the 
unfortunate  debtor.  It  is  inconceivable  that  the  Twelve 
Tables  should  have  remained  the  fixed  bod}  of  Roman  law  dur- 
ing the  long  period  that  elapsed  before  they  were  superseded, 
and  we  must  assume  that  they  were  little  more  than  the  trunk 
upon  which  frequent  amendments  were  engrafted.  For  between 
the  work  of  the  decemvirs  and  that  of  Justinian,  was  an  interval 
of  nearly  one  thousand  years.  During  that  time  Rome  had 
achieved  all  that  is  greatest  in  her  marvellous  history.  She  had 
borne  her  victorious  eagles  into  many  lands,  and  in  in- 
tellectual achievement  had  kept  step  with  the  tread  of  her 
triumphant  armies.  Through  the  changing  conditions  of  these 
ten  centuries,  that  compass  the  greater  part  of  the  history  of  the 
republic  and  the  empire,  the  law  of  Rome  was  the  Twelve 
Tables,  supplemented  by  numerous  statutes  and  decrees  and  by 
the  treatises  of  the  jurisconsults.  It  was  A.  D.  528  that  the  Em- 
peror Justinian  projected  the  great  work  that  bears  his  name, 
perhaps  justly  in  that  he  conceived  and  fostered  it,  though  its 
merit  must  be  attributed  to  the  labors  of  the  lawyer  Tribonian. 
It  was  a  daring  project,  contemplating  nothing  less  than  a  uni- 
versal code  of  law  embodied  in  a  single  statutory  enactment. 
This  design  was  successfully  carried  out.  When  completed 
after  five  years  of  labor,  it  presented  a  collation  of  the  imperial 


constitutions,  a  compilation  of  all  the  laws  enacted  during  the 
empire  and  a  digest  of  all  recorded  judicial  decisions,  clearly 
formulated  and  logically  classified.  It  can  not  be  regarded  at 
this  time  without  inspiring  profound  admiration,  and  yet  it  was 
the  product  of  a  time  when  the  city  that 

"Sat  upon  her  seven  hills 
And  from  that  throne  of  beauty  ruled  the  world." 

was  toppling  to  its  fall. 

It  was  in  the  year  533  that  the  Code  of  Justinian  was  com- 
pleted, and  its  earliest  successor  dates  1267  years  later.  During 
the  first  year  of  the  present  century  the  Emperor  Napoleon 
entered  upon  the  task  of  rescuing  the  laws  of  France  from 
chaos  and  reducing  them  to  an  orderly  and  comprehensive  sys- 
tem. Great  learning  and  painstaking  were  expended  upon  the 
work,  and  it  is  in  all  respects  a  more  enviable  monument  of  the 
genius  of  its  great  projector  than  the  conquest  of  half  the  con- 
tinent. The  Code  Napoleon  was  embraced  in  five  volumes,  and 
attempted  with  fair  success  to  provide  for  every  contingency  in 
the  affairs  of  men  that  could  invoke  the  application  of  law.  It 
is  still  the  law  of  France,  and  has  left  a  greater  or  less  impress 
upon  the  jurisprudence  of  those  countries  of  Europe  whither  it 
was  borne  with  the  conquering  legions  of  its  author.  It  was 
transplanted  in  Lousiana  which  was  consecutively  a  Spanish  and 
a  French  colony,  and  which,  after  it  became  a  State  of  the  Am- 
erican Union,  adopted  a  code  which  retains  all  its  principal  fea- 
tures. Thus  it  comes  to  pass  that  one  of  the  States  of  our  Ke- 
public  has  a  legal  system  that  is  radically  different  from  those 
that  obtain  in  the  others. 

Partial  codes  are  common  in  thi^  country,  beginning  with  that 
inexcusable  specimen  of  craz3'-quilt  legislation,  the  Revised 
Statutes  of  the  United  States,  and  extending  through  all  the 
States.  These,  aside  from  their  provisions  respecting  govern- 
mental functions,  are  simply  legislative  enactments  of  legal 
principles  and  deal  principally  with  titles  to  real  property,  the 
distribution  of  estates  and  the  definitions  and  punishment  of 
crimes.     They  do  not  assume  to   be  exhaustive,  and  even  as  to 


20 

those  subjects  of  which  they  treat,  the  unwritten  law  is  liberally 
drawn  upon  for  the  exposition  and  application  of  their  provis- 
ions. 

What  I  have  said  may  convey  some  idea  of  the  written  law, 
or  of  the  principal  attempts  that  have  been  made  to  formulate 
the  body  of  the  law  that  existed  in  the  customs  of  the  people, 
the  decisions  of  courts  and  scattered  and  fragmentary  enact- 
ments, and  embody  them  in  comprehensive  systems  of  legisla- 
tion. If  I  have  succeeded  in  this,  I  have  prepared  the  way  for 
an  understanding  of  the  subject  of  this  address.  What  I  will 
continue  to  call  for  the  convenience  of  the  term  "The  Unwritten 
Law,"  in  violation  of  Prof.  Pomeroy's  protest,  embraces  the  en- 
tire body  of  legal  rules  and  principles  that  do  not  possess  the 
form  and  sanction  of  statutes  enacted  b}^  legislative  authority. 
It  may  be  stated  with  confidence  that  no  two  law  suits  ever  pre- 
sented exactly  the  same  features.  A  court  is  confronted  with  a 
given  state  of  facts,  and  with  the  duty  thereupon  to  see  that  the 
legal  rights  of  the  parties  are  protected.  First  it  invokes  gen- 
eral principles  of  law  that  may  have  their  germ  in  abstract  right, 
or  in  the  rude  customs  of  the  people  centuries  before.  Then 
it  seeks  in  the  decisions  of  other  courts  for  analogous  cases,  and 
applying  these  as  nearly  as  may  be,  it  pronounces  a  decision 
which  in  turn  becomes  a  precedent  to  aid  later  tribunals  in  deal- 
ing with  like  questions.  So  "The  Unwritten  Law"  is  an  accre- 
tion that  commenced  with  the  birth  of  time  and  reaches  to  the 
living  present.  For  its  ultimate  source  we  have  only  to  read  in 
the  language  of  inspiration,  "There  is  one  Law  giver,"  and  to 
find  it  in  the  divinely  implanted  instinct  of  right.  For  the  rest 
it  is  a  growth  in  which  custom  and  analogy  are  the  active  prin- 
ciples. 

Our  language  and  our  law  have  both  a  sturdy  Germanic  stock 
The  Angles  and  the  Saxons  occupied  England  earl}  in  the  sixth 
century  and  dominated  the  country  until  the  Norman  conquest 
of  1066.  During  the  greater  part  of  this  period  they  were 
divided  into  tribes  or  small  kingdoms  and  had  no  uniform  sys- 
tem of  laws.  The  different  customs  of  the  several  counties 
were  administered  by  the  local  tribunals,  called    folk-courts,  and 


21 

survived  the  union  of  the  government  under  King  Egbert  and 
even  the  conquest  of  England  by  the  Normans.  One  of  the 
local  institutions  that  were  preserved  performed  an  important 
part  in  the  history  of  our  own  country.  The  rule  of  descent  of 
real  property  in  England  is  primogeniture,  that  is,  realty 
passes  to  the  eldest  male  child.  But  in  the  county  of  Kent  a 
different  principle  obtains  that  divides  the  lands  of  a  decedent 
equally  among  his  children.  When  King  Charles  gave  his 
brother  the  duke  of  York  the  American  province  that  is  now  the 
State  of  New  York  he  inserted  in  the  patent  a  clause  that  the  pos- 
sesions were  to  descend  "according  to  the  custom  of  the  county  of 
Kent."  This  circumstance,  which  seems  to  have  been  little 
more  than  accidental,  may  be  said  to  have  saved  this  country 
from  the  principle  of  primogeniture,  and  in  its  remoter  conse- 
quence has  been  far-reaching  beyond  conception.  With  the 
great  facilities  for  the  accumulation  of  wealth  which  this  country 
has  always  afforded,  if  estates  were  to  descend  without  division, 
our  people  would  almost  inevitably  have  succumbed  to  an  aris- 
tocracy. It  was  the  ownership  of  the  soil  in  small  parcels  that 
made  free  institutions  possible,  and  the  same  condition  is  their 
chief  muniment  to-day.  If  that  condition  shall  ever  pass  away 
and  be  succeeded  by  landed  monopolies,  we  may  be  sure  that 
the  downfall  of  popular  government  and  all  that  is  most  char- 
acteristic and  precious  in  our  political  and  social  institutions  will 
not  be  long  in  following.  It  seems  Hke  a  trifling  incident,  the 
addition  of  a  few  words  to  a  royal  patent,  but  it  proved  to  be 
the  pebble  that  turns  the  course  of  a  mighty  river. 

Feudalism  left  a  strong  impression  upon  the  laws  that  we  in- 
herited from  England.  As  a  social  condition  we  are  so  widely 
separated  from  it  in  point  of  time  that  its  grand  and  rugged  out- 
lines appear  to  us  as  dimly  defined  as  an  ancient  myth;  but  you 
cannot  to-day  read  understandingly  the  deed  of  a  lot  in  Lockey's 
Addition  to  the  Helena  townsite  without  recurring  to  its  insti- 
tutions! 

The  laws  that  are  derived  from  feudalism  represent,  as  laws 
ever  do,  the  customs  and  advancement  of  the  people  among 
whom  they  existed.       The   Saxons   and   Normans  who  built  up 


22 


the  feudal  institutions  of  England  to  a  superstructive  of  sur- 
passing splendor,  were  wailike  races  with  no  other  standard  of 
honor  and  power  than  military  service.  The  only  thing  that 
was  really  treated  as  property  was  land.  The  absolute  owner- 
ship of  the  soil  was  vested  in  the  King,  and  he  parcelled  out  the 
possession  and  enjoyment  of  it  in  large  tracts  to  favored  retainers 
from  whom  he  exacted  in  return  a  certain  number  of  men  to 
serve  under  his  command.  By  the  practice  of  subinfeudation, 
the  tenants  who  held  immediately  from  the  King  divided  their 
lands  and  let  them  to  inferior  tenants  receiving  in  payment  the 
services  of  armed  men;  and  this  process  continued  until  between 
the  sovereign  and  the  wretched  being  who  actually  tilled  the 
soil  there  were  several  classes  or  degrees  of  tenants. 

Around  this  system  the  laws  of  England  were  built  up.  But 
later,  and  about  the  time  of  the  revolution  of  1688,  commerce 
and  manufactures  began  to  engage  a  larger  share  of  the  attention 
of  the  English  people,  and  movables,  or  what  is  known  to  us  as 
personal  property  arose  to  importance.  Possessions  of  this 
character  were  almost  wholly  without  law  to  define  and  protect 
the  rights  of  owners,  as  the  laws  which  feudalism  had  implanted 
upon  titles  and  tenures  of  the  land  were  not  adapted  to  movable 
goods.  Precedents  and  analogies  failing  to  meet  the  require- 
ment of  rules  to  deal  with  the  new  questions  arising,  recourse 
was  had  to  the  Institutes  of  Justinian.  Perhaps,  however,  i^ 
would  be  more  accurate  to  say  that  the  commercial  intercourse 
of  England  with  the  nations  of  the  continent  had  introduced 
certain  usages  which  were  recognized  among  merchants,  and 
that  the  courts  adopted  and  enforced  these  usages  so  that  they 
became  a  part  of  the  law  of  England.  However  this  may  be, 
it  is  clear  that  the  law  merchant  which  we  received  from  Eng- 
land had  its  original  source  in  Rome,  and  is  strongly  pervaded 
with  the  spirit  of  what  is  called  the  civil,  in  contradistinction  to 
the  common  law.  The  grafting  of  a  system  borrowed  from  a 
foreign  soil  to  control  relations  and  possessions  that  had  newly 
come  into  existence  is  an  early  and  notable  illustration  of  that 
peculiar  excellence  of  the  unwritten  law  which  consists  in  its 
unfailing  capacity  of  expansion  and  assimilation. 


23 

'I  wish  now  to  give  one  or  two  turther  illustrations  of  this 
facility  of  assimilating  new  principles  or  expanding  old  ones  to 
meet  the  changes  that  are  inseparably  incident  to  human  society. 
Two  of  these  may  be  found  in  the  history  of  the  law  of  waters. 
The  distinction  between  navigable  and  non-navigable  streams 
possesses  some  importance  in  law  for  reasons  that  it  would  be 
foreign  to  our  present  purpose  to  recite.  The  common  law  of 
England  recognized  as  navigable  only  those  streams  that  felt  the 
flow  and  re-flow  of  the  tides,  for  the  abundant  reason  that  as  a 
matter  of  fact  in  that  country  only  such  water-courses  were  ser- 
viceable for  the  uses  of  commerce.  When  the  common  law 
was  transplanted  in  America  by  the  British  colonies,  it  found 
large  inland  rivers  to  which  tae  tidal  influence  did  not  extend, 
but  which  were  capable  of  affording  passage  for  vessels  of  great 
tonnage.  It  was  monstrous  to  classify  the  Hudson,  Ohio,  Mis- 
sissippi and  Missouri  rivers  as  to  their  legal  status  with  the 
brooks  of  England.  In  other  words,  the  common  law  met  here 
a  new  geographical  condition,  and  it  bent  itself  to  correspond. 
It  was  not  long  before  the  English  rule  was  modified ;  and  it  is 
now  established  by  a  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  in  a  case  concerning  a  river  that  is  not  larger  than 
the  Jefferson  and  quite  as  exempt  from  the  ebb  and  flow  of  tides 
that  if  a  river  is  capable  in  its  natural  state  of  being  used  for 
the  purposes  of  commerce,  no  matter  in  what  mode  the  com- 
merce may  be  conducted,  it  is  navigable  in  fact  and  becomes  in 
law  a  public  water-course  and  highway.  Here  was  a  notable 
departure,  but  one  wholly  consistent  with  the  controlling  prin- 
ciple which  was  expressed  by  Judge  Sanderson  of  California  in 
the  words:  "The  common  law  is  a  science  of  perpetual  growth." 
Following  the  same  general  subject,  we  come  upon  an  illustra- 
tion that  is  closely  associated  with  the  development  of  the  new 
west  of  which  we  are  a  part.  Under  the  common  law  the  right  to 
the  use  of  the  waters  of  a  stream  belonged  to  the  owner  of  its 
banks.  This  right  can  not  be  lost  by  non-user,  though  it  is  a 
subject  of  prescription  and  might  pass  by  adverse  enjoyment 
for  the  period  fixed  by  the  Statute  of  Limitations.  All  the 
owners  of  the  banks  of  a  stream  have  a  right  to  use  its  waters 


24 

in  common,  and  each  is  governed  in  the  exercise  of  the  right  by 
the  all-pervading  principle  that  one  must  so  use  his  own  prop- 
erty as  not  to  injure  that  of  another.  It  followed  that  waters 
must  be  allowed  to  flow  in  their  natural  channel  as  they  were 
accustomed  to  flow — ut  currere  solebat. 

Such  was  the  law  at  the  time  of  the  discovery  of  gold  on  the 
Pacific  coast.  Water  was  an  indispensable  agent  in  separating 
the  precious  metal  from  the  earth  in  which  it  was  found.  It  was 
equally  essential,  owing  to  the  climatic  conditions  of  this  section, 
to  enable  agriculture  to  perform  its  function  of  furnishing  food 
for  the  gathering  multitudes  of  eager  gold  seekers.  The  pio- 
neers of  California  found  streams  of  water  flowing  idly  through 
the  public  lands.  Their  diversion  to  places  where  they  could 
be  used  in  separating  gold  from  the  earth  and  in  the  irrigation 
of  arid  fields  could  injure  no  one,  and  the  very  existence  of  the 
community  depended  upon  it.  It  was  plainly  a  violation  of  law; 
every  man  who  turned  water  out  of  its  natural  channel  was  a 
law-breaker;  but  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  that  this  consideration 
scarcely  gave  them  pause. 

In  the  construction  of  works  for  mining  and  irrigation,^large 
expendiures  were  necessary,  and  millions  of  dollars  were  soon 
invested  in  ditches  and  flumes  for  the  conveyance  of  water  from 
its  channel  to  the  placers  and  fields.  Should  these  vast  prop- 
erties be  left  without  the  protection  of  the  courts?  Every  con- 
sideration of  justice  and  policy  gave  answer  in  the  negative. 
The  situation  was  a  difficult  one;  it  required  that  a  naked  tres- 
pass should  be  not  only  condoned  but  legalized  and  entrenched 
behind  the  muniments  that  would  afford  it  the  security  that  the 
law  extends  only  to  absolute  rights  of  prosperty. 

The  common  law  proved  to  be  equal  to  the  emergency,  as  it 
is  equal  to  all  emergencies.  Said  Judge  Sanderson,  from  whom 
we  have  already  quoted:  "The  reasons  which  constitute  the 
ground  work  of  the  common  law  upon  this  subject  remain  un- 
disturbed. The  conditions  to  which  we  are  called  upon  to  apply 
them  are  changed,  and  not  the  rules  themselves."  It  is  not 
necessary  to  inquire  whether  this  is  strictly  true-  The  learned 
judge  would  perhaps  have  stated  the  situation  more  accurately 


25 

if  he  had  boldly  announced  that  the  principles  of  the  common 
law  did  not  fit  the  conditions  that  confronted  that  commonwealth 
and  that  it  must  extend  its  hospitality  to  new  principles  that  those 
conditions  demanded  for  the  furtherance  of  justice  and  the  well 
being  of  society. 

While  the  doctrine  of  the  common  law  was  that  only  the 
owners  of  the  banks  of  a  stream  had  a  right  to  the  use  of  its 
waters,  and  even  they  could  not  divert  it  from  its  channels,  the 
courts  of  the  West  came  to  hold  that  a  right  to  water  could  be 
gained  without  regard  to  riparian  proprietorship  by  its  appro- 
priation and  diversion,  priority  in  time  conferring  superiority  of 
right.  When  the  question  went  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States,  it  found  there  Hon.  Stephen  J.  Field,  a  pioneer 
of  California  who  had  sat  upon  the  Supreme  Bench  of  that 
State.  In  giving  the  decision  of  the  Court,  he  stated  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  common  law,  and  then  proceeded  in  ihe  following 
language :  "This  equality  of  right  among  all  the  proprietors  on 
the  same  stream  would  have  been  incompatible  with  any  ex- 
tended diversion  of  the  water  by  one  proprietor,  and  its  convey- 
ance for  mining  purposes  to  points  from  which  it  could  not  be 
restored  to  the  stream.  But  the  government  being  the  sole  pro- 
prietor of  all  the  public  lands,  whether  bordering  on  the  streams 
or  otherwise,  there  was  no  occasion  for  the  application  of  the 
common  law  doctrine  of  riparian  proprietorship  with  respect  to 
the  waters  of  those  streams.  The  government  by  its  silent 
acquiescence,  assented  to  the  general  occupation  of  the  lands  for 
mining;  and,  to  encourage  their  free  and  unlimited  use  for  that 
purpose  reserved  such  lands  as  were  mineral  from  sale,  and  the 
acquisition  of  title  by  settlement.  And  he  who  first  connects 
his  own  labor  v^ith  thp  property  thus  situated,  and  open  to  gen- 
eral exploration,  does,  in  natural  justice,  acquire  a  better  right 
to  its  use  and  enjoyment  than  others  who  have  not  given  such 
labor.  So  the  miners  on  the  public  lands  throughout  the  Pacific 
States  and  Territories  by  their  customs,  usages  and  regulations 
everywhere  recognized  the  inherent  justice  of  this  principle; 
and  the  principle  itself  was  at  an    early    period    recognized    by 


26 

legislation  and  enforced  by  the  Courts  in  those  States  and  Ter- 
ritories." 

It  is  useless  to  do  more  than  suggest  the  obvious  truth  that  if 
our  jurisprudence  had  been  embodied  in  a  written  code  this  rad- 
ical departure  from  its  principles  would  have  been  impossible; 
yet  that  departure  has  been  prolific  of  beneticent  consequences 
beyond  calculation.  It  rendered  practicable  the  settlement  of 
this  vast  section  that  now  affords  homes  for  six  millions  of  human 
beings,  and  in  its  sociological  and  economic  influence  may  be 
said  to  have  changed  the  history  of  the  race. 

In  the  year  1829,  steam  was  first  applied  to  transportation  on 
land  by  George  Stephenson  with  his  historic  engine,  the  Rocket. 
The  rapidly  increasing  use  of  this  invention  confronted  the  law 
with  a  new  puzzle.  How  was  this  later  juggernaut  that  went 
shrieking  through  the  land  to  be  controlled?  It  was  revolution- 
izing commerce;  it  was  sure  to  be  a  factor  in  every  temporal 
interest  of  humanity;  but  the  law  knew  it  not. 

We  have  already  seen  how  the  unwritten  law  takes  on  accre- 
tions by  the  principle  of  analogy.  So  in  this  case,  courts  were 
not  long  in  determining  that  a  railroad  is  a  road.  The  vehicles 
moved  upon  fixed  tracks,  and  the  motive  power  was  steam  in- 
stead of  animals;  but  notwithstanding  these  differences,  a  rail- 
road was  simply  an  improved  highway.  With  this  likeness  for 
a  basis,  the  courts  have  built  up  the  whole  system  of  jurispru- 
dence governing  the  construction  and  operation  of  these  agen- 
cies of  traffic  and  travel. 

The  analogy  was  found  very  useful  in  assisting  the  building 
of  railroads.  At  first  they  could  only  secure  the  right  of  way  for 
their  tracks  by  purchase  from  the  owners  of  the  property.  But 
this  was  in  some  cases  only  to  be  effected  at  extravagant  prices, 
and  in  some  cases  could  not  be  done  at  all.  But  the  doctrine  of 
eminent  domain  vested  in  the  sovereign  authority  of  a  State  the 
right  to  take  private  property  for  a  public  use,  and  such 
a  use  was  the  opening  of  a  highway.  Thus  by  the  delegation 
from  the  State  of  the  right  of  eminent  domain  railway  com- 
panies could  condemn  and  appropriate  by  proceedings  provided 
by  statutes,  such  land  as  was   necessary  for  the  laying  of  their 


^7 

tracks;  and  it  is  mainly  this  that  made  possible  the  eighty  thou- 
sand miles  of  railroad  that  make  the  map  of  our  continent  look 
like  an  exaggerated  cob-web. 

In  time  railroads  came  to  be  a  mighty  power  in  the  land. 
Their  influence  over  commerce,  industry  and  property  was  little 
less  than  supreme,  a  fact  that  was  happily  characterized  by  an 
eloquent  orator  and  profound  thinker  who  spoke  of  their  domi- 
nation as  "the  modern  feudalism."  "It  is  not  surprising  that  the}-^ 
exercised  their  power  to  their  own  profit,  or  that  it  led  to  abuse 
and  wrong.  The  evil  grew  to  be  far-reaching  and  grievous 
before  the  people  were  aroused  to  the  necessity  of  self-protec- 
tion. Then  they  seemed  powerless.  Railroads  were  owned 
by  private  companies.  The  State  could  not  dictate  to  an  indi- 
vidual what  he  should  charge  for  his  services,  or  how  he  should 
conduct  his  business;  how  then  could  it  dictate  to  a  private  com- 
pany? It  was  some  time  before  an  answer  was  discovered,  but 
at  length  the  courts  found  a  reason  for  doing  what  justice  and 
public  considerations  of  importance  demanded.  True,  a  railway 
company  is  a  private  corporation  in  the  sense  that  it  is  an  aggre- 
gation of  private  persons  contributing  their  private  means  to  a 
certain  enterprise.  But  such  a  company  exercises  by  delegation 
the  right  of  eminent  domain,  which  is  an  attribute  of  sovereignty 
and  thereby  takes  on  a  quasi  public  character  which  subjects  it 
to  the  control  of  the  State.  In  this  reasoning  a  sanction  was 
found  for  the  legislation  regulating  charges  and  forbidding  dis- 
criminations and  other  abuses  such  as  the  so-called  "granger 
laws"  of  some  of  the  States  and  the  inter-state  commerce  law 
of  Congress  which  is  now  occupying  so  large  a  share  of  public 
attention.  So  the  inherent  faculty  of  the  unwritten  lavv  of  re- 
sponding to  the  demands  of  new  situations,  always  to  the  end 
that  justice  shall  prevail,  was  again  vindicated. 

The  increasing  use  of  short-hand  writing  has  already  worked 
some  changes  in  the  machinery  through  which  justice  is  ad- 
ministered and  may  be  expected  to  effect  more  radical  innova- 
tions upon  our  jurisprudence.  I  have  myself  seen  a  witness  ex- 
amined and  cross-examined  upon  his  bed  of  sickness  from  which 
he  could  not  arise,  and  his  testimony  then  read  to  the  jury  from 


28 

the  stenographer's  notes.  Of  course  this  could  only  be  done  by 
stipulation;  but  not  many  years  ago,  such  a  proceeding  would 
have  been  regarded  as  a  blow  at  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  and  a  clean  knock  out  of  Magna  Charta. 

It  will  be  interesting  to  observe  what  new  principles  will  claim 
the  hospitality  of  our  jurisprudence  in  consequence  of  the  gen- 
eral introduction  of  typewriters.  The  use  of  seals  which  are 
still  attached  to  certain  classes  of  instruments  is  a  relic  of  a  time 
when  to  be  able  to  write  one's  name  was  a  rare  and  rather  a 
despised  accomplishment;  and  now  that  we  are  turning  over  the 
business  of  chirography  to  a  machine,  perhaps  we  will  recur  to 
primitive  expedients  and  makea  seal  serve  all  the  purposes  of  a 
signature  Another  field  of  conjecture  is  opened  as  to  what 
changes  in  our  jurisprudence  may  ensue  from  the  invention  of 
the  telephone.  Marriages  by  telephone  have  so  far  been  only 
the  creations  of  newspaper  paragraphers,  and  it  is  doubtful 
whether  they  will  ever  become  popular;  but  it  is  safe  to  predict 
that  the  facilities  for  conveying  human  speech  for  long  distances 
will  in  time  make  its  impress  upon  English  and  American  juris- 
prudence. It  is  thus  that  the  unwritten  law  expands  and  adjusts 
itself  to  each  changing  phase  in  the  progress  of  mankind.  If 
we  were  to  look  upon  it  as  an  immense  volume,  we  will  find  a 
liberal  space  on  every  page  upon  which  there  may  be  written 
without  end  new  principles  as  time  moves  on  in  the  performance 
of  its  appointed  task. 

The  relative  merits  of  written  and  unwritten  law — of  the  law 
that  is  in  the  form  of  direct  statutory  enactment  and  that  which 
is  built  up  by  judicial  decisions — have  been  often  discussed,  and  the 
question  is  now  confronting  us  in  consequence  of  the  preparation 
of  a  general  code  for  submission  to  our  Legislative  Assembly. 
It  is  urged  in  support  of  this  measure  that  there  should  be  a 
clear,  precise  and  authoritative  formulation  of  the  law  of  the 
land  that  will  enable  every  citizen  of  ordinary  intelligence  to  as- 
certain, each  for  himself,  what  are  his  rights,  duties,  and  responsi- 
bilities. Thus  when  he  enters  into  new  relations,  he  may  know 
in  advance  vvhat  they  imply  and  will  not  be  left  until  difficulties 
have  arisen  and  then  be  required  to  seek  the  aid  of  lawyers  and 


29 

the  courts.  The  unwritten  law,  it  is  claimed,  is  of  necessity 
vague,  indefinite  and  elusive,  and  it  is  only  in  a  code  that  cer- 
tainty and  precision  can  be  attained. 

There  would  be  a  good  deal  of  force  in  these  considerations 
if  human  progress  were  at  an  end.  In  the  nature  of  things  a 
code  can  only  provide  for  conditions  and  relations  existing  at 
the  time  of  its  creation;  it  can  not  anticipate  all  the  incalculable 
possibilities  of  the  future.  Thus  the  feasability  of  a  code  must 
depend  upon  a  state  of  society  differing  little  from  absolute  stag- 
nation. While  there  is  a  leaven  of  unrest  in  the  race;  while 
thought  and  aspiration  are  contriving  successive  changes  in  the 
circumstances  and  activities  of  mankind — so  long  a  fixed  and 
inflexible  system  of  jurisprudence  must  be  inndequate  and  an 
obstruction  to  advancement. 

A  statute  so  comprehensive  and  perfect  in  all  respects  as  to 
obviate  the  necessity  for  courts  is,  humanly  speaking,  an  im- 
possibility. So  far  as  codes  have  been  tried,  they  have  not 
diminished  litigation;  they  have  rather  increased  it.  When  laws 
have  been  passed  to  take  the  place  of  the  unwritten  law  upon  a 
given  subject,  courts  have  quite  commonly  found  more  to  do  in 
interpreting  the  language  of  the  act  than  they  would  have  had 
in  deciding  the  cases  if  no  such  act  had  been  in  existence. 

The  code  which  it  is  now  sought  to  adopt  in  New  York  was 
adopted  some  years  ago  in  California;  and  Prof.  Pomeroy  after 
an  extensive    experience   of    its   operation,  speaks   as  follows: 

"The  Civil  Code  of  California,  among  all  other  instances  of 
similar  legislation,  pre-eminently  needs  judicial  interpretation. 
There  is  hardly  a  section,  whether  it  imbodies  only  a  definition 
or  whether  it  contains  the  utterance  of  some  broad  principle,  or 
some  general  doctrine,  of  some  single  special  rule,  wnich  he 
does  not  require  to  be  judicially  interpreted  in  order  to  ascertain 
with  certainty  its  full  meaning  and  effect.  Upon  this  great  work 
of  construction  and  interpretation,  the  Supreme  Court  has,  in 
reality,  but  just  entered. 

"Our  Civil  Code,  regarded  as  a  comprehensive  system  of  statu- 
tory legislation,  covering  the  entire  private  jurisprudence^  of  the 
State,  as  a  scientific  or  practical  arrangement    and    statement  of 


30 

the  principles,  doctrines,  and  rules  constituting  that  jurispru- 
dence— in  other  words,  as  an  example  of  true  codification — is, 
even  in  the  estimation  of  its  original  authors,  full  of  defects,  im- 
perfections, omissions,  and  even  inconsistencies,  which  must,  so 
far  as  possible,  be  supplied,  removed,  and  harmonized  by  the 
courts,  for  it  be  useless  to  expect  any  real  aid  from  the  Legis- 
lature." 

The  Code  of  Procedure  which  was  adopted  in  New  York  in 
1848,  and  is  now  substantially  in  force  in  most  of  the  States,  was 
in  reality  a  reform,  because  the  old  common  law  forms  of  plead- 
ing were  so  artificial  and  intricate  that  Justice  was  often  smoth- 
ered in  the  folds  of  her  own  garments.  Nevertheless  it  is  found 
that  while  the  decisions  of  the  courts  of  that  State  on  questions 
of  practice  from  the  organization  of  the  State  government  to 
1848,  would  only  fill  twelve  volumes,  the  reports  on  that  class 
of  questions  now  number  130  volumes.  Clearly  it  is  not 
yet  demonstrated  that  codes  can  be  made  to  serve  the  very 
desirable  end  ot  decreasing  litigation. 

And  this  brings  us  to  a  difference  between  the  two  systems  of 
law  that  possesses  grave  importance.  When  a  court  is  called 
upon  to  determine  the  rights  of  parties  under  a  given  state  of 
facts  as  to  a  matter  that  is  governed  by  a  statute,  its  labors  must 
be  directed  to  deciding  the  meaning  of  the  statute  which  may 
be  more  or  less  clearly  and  accurately  set  forth  in  words.  In 
the  absence  of  a  statute,  the  court  has  only  to  look  at  the  gen- 
eral principals  of  justice  by  the  guiding  fights  of  precedent  and 
analogy.  In  the  one  case  it  is  a  question  of  the  meaning  of 
words;  in  the  other  a  question  of  what  morality  and  good  con- 
science would  dictate.  In  the  one  case  the  determination  may 
depend  upon  the  omission  of  a  comma;  in  the  other,  it  will  con- 
form to  the  eternal  principles  of  right. 

But  probably  the  chief  superiority  of  unwritten  over  codified 
law  is  that  faciUty  of  expansion  and  adaptation  which  1  have 
sought  to  illustrate  by  a  few  examples.  A  statute  may  be 
amended  or  repealed  by  the  power  that  enacted  it,  and  that  can 
onl)  be  done  by  another  statute,  which  must  also  be  general  and 
inflexible.     It  is  not  in  the  nature   of  a  legislative   enactment  to 


3^ 

be  susceptible  of  these  nice  adjustments  to  such  particular  case 
that  is  realized  by  the  common  law.  In  deciding  a  particular 
case  judges  do  not  formulate  a  general  rule;  they  only  deter- 
mine the  rights  of  the  parties  under  the  peculiar  circumstances 
of  that  case.  In  so  doing  they  make  a  precedent  which  would 
be,  in  a  degree,  binding  upon  other  judges  if  exactly  the  same 
question  were  to  arise  again,  which,  however,  is  scarcely  sup- 
posable;  but  from  the  body  of  these  precedents  comes  that 
stability  which  can  be  secured  without  the  sacrifice  of  flexibility. 
So,  as  far  as  possible  with  finite  beings,  abstract  justice  is  ap- 
plied to  conciete  conditions.  The  recurrence  to  these  fundamen- 
tal and  universal  ordinances  of  justice  and  morality  is  so  constant 
and  so  characteristic  that  it  has  been  said  with  force  that  the 
Christian  religion  is  a  part  of  the  common  law. 

As  the  interests  and  activities  of  men  grow  and  multiply,  new 
relations  are  created,  and  new  questions  arise.  A  statutory 
jurisprudence  is  worse  than  helpless  to  deal  with  these;  but  the 
unwritten  law  responds  unfailingly  from  sources  that  are  as  in- 
exhaustible as  God  and  Truth.  The  germ  of  vegetable  exis- 
tence sending  its  roots  downward,  spreading  its  branches  up- 
ward, expanding  its  leaves  to  the  sun,  putting  forth  bud  and 
blossom  to  attract  the  insect  to  carry  upon  its  tiny  feet  the  pollen 
dust  that  shall  germinate  new  growths  is  not  more  noiseless, 
harmonious  and  beautiful  than  the  symmetrical  up-building  of 
that  system  of  jurisprudence  which  recognizes  the  precept  of 
inspiration,  "The  letter  killeth,  but  the  spirit  maketh  alive." 

The  imagination  fails  to  compass  the  future  of  the  race.  We 
can  only  recognize  the  certainty  that  it  will  involve  ceaseless 
chanofes  and  diversifications  in  all  social,  commercial  and  indus- 
trial  interests,  activities  and  relations.  Throughout  all  these, 
the  law  must  be  a  present,  pervadmg  and  potent  factor.  But 
this  cannot  be  the  cold  letter  of  statutes  or  the  rigid  formulas  of 
codes.  It  is  only  the  free  spirit  of  the  law  "whose  seat  is  the 
bosom  of  God;  whose  voice  is  the  harmony  of  the  world." 


1-;Y    MON.    W    F.    SANDERS. 


/]//.  /'/rsi(/i-i//,  /.(/(//cs  (H/i/  (ifiilh-nu'iio/  I  lie  luniiii  o/  '/dusters, 
llic  luntiltw  (iiui  llii-  ruj^ih  ami  /\i/)i>iis  o/  llw  Monlann  Uni- 
versity: 

All  impulse  mikI  si-iisi'  ;^allu'i  loicc  and  rclint'iiu'nl  fiom  md'o- 
spci  lion,  Irotii  lioiMs  si'l  apart  lor  coiihiiiplalion,  foi'  patii-iit  i  c- 
vii'W  ol  tlu"  pa.sl,  for  examination  ol  llic  pit'seiil  and  for  |)iojeel- 
iii^  aciivitii'S  for  llu'  futmc.  And  fiom  this  Irnlli  arc  horn  .sacred 
and  anniversary  days.  Tlicy  ar«'  marked  with  red  Idlers  in 
hum, III  hisloi  y.  They  recall  us  liom  the  sordid  monotony  of 
Ihou^^hl  and  atlioii,  they  inleriu|>t  the  s  iliety  and  lassitude  bc- 
<;otlen  of  the  tommonplacc  and  familiar,  and  lift  us  into  lU'W 
views  and  itlalions  alike  with  llu-  interior  and  exterior  world. 
Wc  escape  for  a  time  from  that  of  which  we  arc  a  pait  and  e.\|)ose 
all  our  surroundings  u|>on  some  hill  lop  where  they  may  he  he- 
holdeii  ol  all  men,  hut  chielly  and  most  usefully  beholden  oh- 
jeitivelN'  by  ourselves.  It  is  e.s.seiitial  from  time  to  lime  that 
theri'  shall  be  ri'trospeiiion  and  review,  that  there  shall  be 
eiu|uiiy  as  to  oiu"  relations  vvith  other  activities  ami  impulses, 
that  we  may  conform  to  tlu-  ^riuMal  moMMueiil  ol  which  we  arc 
but  .1  pait.  And  so  most  wisely  has  the  univeisily  appointed 
its  annual  anniversary,  its  day  of  days  when  it  shall  interrupt  all 
its  bus}'  toil,  cease  the  patient  and  pertinacious  labor,  call  .i 
moiiu'htaiy  h;ilt  upon  individual  cHoil  and  ti  anslij^ure  the  sihool 
into  oiTe  stru;4|;le,  one  idea,  and  lompaie  that  unity  v.ith  .ill 
contt  luporai  \'  .iiitl  io-mmIc  tlu-mes. 


Wc  have,  tlicictoic,  as  a  j)crmaiK;iil  ^iill  lo  oui  iiilclk'ilual 
life,  as  one  of  llie  treasures  of  lliis  ;^reat  inslituliou  lo  be  of  in- 
creasing value  wilh  the  revolving  years,  this  festival  anniversary, 
Coniinencenient  thiy.  It  is  a  day  saeretl  to  Learning,  ii  is  a  day 
when  her  devotees  gather  with  delight  and  devotion,  to  make 
from  their  augmented  and  allied  experiences  some  contribution  to 
her  weal.  'i'lu;se  are  days  whiih  as  they  niulliply  in  innnber 
and  riM'ede  into  the  past  will  constitute  milestones  in  her  history, 
making  beautiful  and  alluring  the  atmosphere  which  surrounds 
the  school,  giving  pride  lo  all  those  who  by  hcv  eijuipped  for 
manly  duly  shall  from  these  walls  go  forth  to  hght  tlu;  battles  of 
liie  in  her  spirit  and  lor  the  truth  for  which  she  stands. 

It  is  therefore  lilting  that  the  Stale  in  the  person  of  her  chiefesl 
ollicers  should  here  salute  the  School,  that  civic  power  and 
scholarship  should  here  sit  side  by  side  in  thai  inseparable  com- 
j>aMionship,  which  may  not  be  destroyt^d.  In  this  affectionate 
embrace,  learning  and  law  shall  forever  abide  for  neither  can 
exist  without  the  other.  'I'hat  in  this  intimate  and  wise  rela- 
tionship the  Stale  has  some  advantage  none  may  tieny.  ICxterior 
forces  ordain  and  support  her,  but  she  would  without  other 
nourishment  wither  and  decay.  SeKishness  and  greed  readily 
conceive  need  for  her  impeialive  existence  and  are  impelled  lo 
her  supjiort  even  by  coarseness  itself.  Hut  like  k;arning  for  her 
increase  and  usefulness  she  must  comuikiikI  tin'  alf(H:tioii  and 
homage  of  loyal  sons.  Without  this  habit  no  ordination  could 
perpetuate  her  benelicent  reign.  Nor  can  mere  devotion  to  or- 
dained govermnent  preserve  her  but  by  a  wise  perception  and 
supply  of  her  needs.  l^^or  so  it  is  that  in  the  evolution  of  our 
industrial  life,  in  the  multiplication  of  the  di-sires  of  men  and 
nations,  in  the  ever  widening  lheal(;r  of  human  industry,  in  the 
disturbances  conse(pient  on  our  inventive  genius,  we  find  our- 
selves day  by  day  confronted  with  unsolved  problems,  present- 
ing ever  and  anon  new  diflicullies  which  no  prec(;denl  illumines, 
hedged  around  with  disturbing  doubts,  which  no  prescience 
wholly  removes.  No  blind  follower  ol  the  blind  is  adecpiate  to 
|)oint  wilh  conlidence  our  course  in  this  untrodden  way  And 
thus  it  is  thai  the  State  sununons    leiiinitig  to   l.er    ;iid  and  walks 


34 

with  her  hand  in  hand.  She  cannot  permit  a  step  forward  save 
as  she  is  guid  jd  by  scholarship.  It  is  the  eye  of  the  mind. 
They  are  each  essential  to  the  other,  each  halves  of  a  golden 
whole. 

In  the  rivalries  and  contentions  which  new  conditions,  cupidi- 
ties and  human  ambitions  incite,  in  the  struggles  born  ot  varied 
aspiration,  impulse  or  hope,  new  problems  are  ever  being  pre- 
sented, crystalhzed  and  demanding  solution.  If  there  can  be 
brought  to  that  solution  the  calmness  and  prudence  which  wis- 
dom gives,  the  large  examination  and  just  determination  which 
is  her  mission,  no  question,  however,  fraught  with  danger  can 
long  disturb  nor  seriously  imperil  the  social  or  moral  order. 

We  are  impelled  to  this  companionship  by  considerations 
which  a  superficial  knowledge  even  recognizes  and  affirms.  For 
in  the  order  of  nature,  worldly  prosperity  and  moral  good  are 
inseparable  and  ever  walk  hand  in  hand.  Contradictions  of  this 
truth  seeming  to  be  exceptions  are  apparent  rather  than  real. 
No  state  or  community  has  long  survived  the  decay  of  morals, 
and  morality  is  the  die' ate  of  wise  selfishness.  Without  enquiry 
as  to  their  origin  if  the  Ten  Commandments,  their  memory  and 
history,  were  blotted  from  literature,  and  thought  of  them  utterly 
annihilated,  human  experience  after  much  turmoil  through  any 
disasters  and  vicissitudes  would  recreate  the  impressive  com- 
mands, and  commend  them  to  the  approval  of  civilized  men. 
And  this  is  their  vindication. 

Ignorance  assumes  the  determination  of  complex  controversies 
affecting  the  welfare  of  mankind  without  a  wise  knowledge 
of  the  difficulties  presented  and  with  the  most  superficial  appli- 
cation of  remedies  proposed.  Impulse  rather  than  reason,  im- 
patience rather  than  wisdom,  are  natural  characteristics  of  the 
untrained  mind,  and  we  are  in  the  midst  of  an  era  when  un- 
trained minds  confidently  assume  a  superiority  to  human  experi- 
ence and  yield  to  impulse  as  a  supreme  guide.  No  controversy 
can  be  wisely  and  finally  determined  but  by  a  comprehension  of 
all  the  elements  which  enter  into  it,  and  the  world  is  wasting  its 
energy  in  struggles  to  correct  things  which  seen  only  with  par- 
tial vision  it  does  not  comprehend. 


35 

It  is  not  by  single  instances,  but  by  principles  that  remedies 
are  found,  it  is  not  by  the  study  of  a  single  application  to  indi- 
vidual action  that  the  public  good  is  foreshadowed.  Above  all 
it  is  not  by  each  party  or  person  striving  for  the  welfare  of  its 
or  his  craft  to  the  disregard  of  all  others  that  the  orderly  pro- 
gress of  what  we  call  civilization  is  made.  And  it  seems  to  me 
that  this  is  the  mistake  of  our  times.  Some  years  since  a  dis- 
tinguished statesman — himself  for  many  years  ornamenting  a 
seat  in  the  Senate  said :  "These  Senators  have  each  their  avoca- 
tion and  experience,  and  are  striving  and  voting  from  considera- 
tions affecting  that  avocation  and  experience  exclusively."  To 
this  statement  which  unquestionably  was  an  exaggeration  of  a 
perceived  evil  I  expressed  surprise  and  apprehension,  but  my 
fears  he  sought  to  allay  by  saying,  so  varied  were  these  avoca- 
tions and  personal  interests  that  each  had  its  representative  and 
in  the  lapse  of  years  and  as  a  resulting  strife,  affairs  ultimated 
about  as  well  as  if  legislators  acted  from  philosophical  considera- 
tions. But  there  is  too  much  of  truth  in  the  statement  that  in 
modern  days  we  do  not  sufficiently  act  on  the  grave  affairs 
which  a  democracy  has  in  its  keeping,  from  a  comprehensive 
and  philosophic  view;  we  belittle  learning  and  minimize  the 
value  of  human  history  and  the  abstract  rules  deducible  there- 
from. For  the  value  of  learning  arises  from  its  inerrant  deduc- 
tions from  every  circumstance  of  human  life,  sifted  and  separ- 
ated from  the  accidents  oE  fortune,  assorted,  classified  and  com- 
pared until  from  them  all  a  true  rule  of  human  conduct  is 
evolved.  Modern  life  will  have  no  partial  view,  the  entire  hori- 
zon is  its  field  of  observation,  it  gives  proper  weight  to  every 
consideration,  it  insures  against  folly  and  is  the  impelling  cause 
of  moral  and  social  order.  Too  much  of  human  energy  put 
forth  for  the  same  noble  ends  is  wasted  by  diversity  of  view 
and  jarring  and  discordant  strife  born  of  a  want  of  knowledge 
diminishes  the  harvest  of  good. 

It  is  an  old  vision  that  "wisdom  is  the  principal  thing."  Gee 
"wisdom  and  with  all  thy  getting,  get  understanding."  "Take 
fast  hold  of  instruction,  let  her  not  go,  keep  her  for  she  is  thy 
life."   And  when  our  fathers  put  the  burden  of  government  upon 


36 

all  the  people  and  trusted  to  their  skill  to  manage  so  complex 
an  enterprise,  their  wisdom  foretold  the  imperative  need  of 
learning  to  qualify  the  new  kings  for  the  new  duty  thus  auda- 
ciously devolved  upon  them.  No  circumstance  of  their  lives  is 
of  higher  praise  than  their  labor  and  sacrilice  to  establish  insti- 
tutions of  learning,  to  render  secure  the  new  system,  which  in 
their  enthusiastic  conception  of  human  rights,  they  had  thrust 
upon  a  surprised  and  expectant  world. 

l^^tters  theretofore  in  the  hands  of  persons  trained  for  their 
management,  were  henceforth  to  be  confided  to  the  common 
people,  all  unused  to  the  complexities  and  the  large  considera- 
tions which  sway  peoples  and  take  hold  of  and  vitally  affect 
their  material  welfare  and  give  direction  to  their  energy  and 
hope.  New  conditions  which  in  the  mutations  of  human  activi- 
ties were  ever  to  arise  with  multiplied  interrogations,  impera- 
tively demanded  solution.  The  moral  and  social  order  was  to 
be  conserved  by  action  well  nigh  universal. 

No  more  were  persons  to  be  set  apart  from  others  to  study 
governmental  philosophy  and  enquire  the  beckonings,  the  warn- 
ings, the  lessons  of  history.  It  is  the  chiefest  thing  that  educa- 
tion forbids  conclusion  fcom  fragmentary  or  partial  views.  It 
enables  its  votary  to  see  the  entire  horizon  and  to  comprehend 
the  elements  which  enter  into  every  question  and  decision,  and 
to  render  justice  to  each  of  tiie  diverse  philosophies,  dividing 
human  thinking  and  to  which  portions  of  the  human  race  adhere. 
It  makes  provincialism  impossible,  and  its  saving  power  is  mani- 
fest in  exposing  to  fatal  questioning  those  differences  which  are 
apparent  rather  than  real  and  which  keep  in  futile  turmoil,  com- 
munities and  states.  It  finds  in  abstract  rules  or  past  experience 
precedents  which  furnish  a  solution  for  every  quandary,  and  an 
escape  from  every  difficulty.  But  it  is  not  the  remembered  text, 
or  problems  or  their  solutions,  which  give  to  learning  its  chief 
value.  In  its  acquisition  the  human  mind  becomes  agile  in  the 
pursuit  of  truth,  eager  for  investigation,  difficult  of  deception, 
confident  of  its  resources,  and  pertinacious  in  the  pursuit  of  un- 
discovered good. 

The  times  upon  which   we   have   fallen    are  of  abounding  in- 


31 

terest  and  the  very  era  itself  is  one  for  congratulation.  It  is  a 
time  of  strong  and  stormy  agitation  when  new  problems  of  gov- 
ernment and  social  life  and  morals  impend  demanding  solution. 
Reformers  are  found  on  every  hand,  here  intent  upon  reclaim- 
ing "Sahara"  by  processes  which  no  wisdom  justifies,  and  there 
with  their  heads  in  the  clouds,  impracticable  and  without  com- 
prehension of  the  material  with  which  they  have  to  do.  On 
every  hand  the  long  imprisoned  winds  are  loosed,  strange 
theories  proposed,  wonderful  diagnoses  of  social  wrongs  .are 
propounded,  until  one  must  wonder  at  the  innumerable  evils  seen 
and  the  thrice  innumerable  remedies  prescribed.  The  ignorant 
are  misled  by  the  perspective,  being  swayed  by  that  which  is 
near  and  small  rather  than  by  that  which  is  commanding  but 
remote,  as  the  briar  at  your  nose  seems  greater  than  the  oak  on 
the  horizon.  '  Conscious  of  supreme  and  prevailing  force, 
ignorance  vaunts  itself,  but  like  Alciphron  its  devotees  are 
swinging  in  air  and  darkness  knowing  not  whither  them 
the  winds  do  blow.  "Chaos  umpire  sits."  Confusion  and 
babble  fill  the  air  with  their  cries  until  the  children  of  the  wise 
in  wonder  are  compelled  to  enquire  and  examine  the  evils  which 
oppress  and  to  soberly  prescribe  the  remedies  which  may  limit 
or  eradicate  their  flagitious  influence. 

It  is  the  mission  of  scholarship  to  irradiate  with  its  intelligence 
this  might}  nebulae  of  incoherence  and  to  bring  oider  out  of  all 
this  chaos.  Selfishness  and  cupidity  may  prescribe  for  all  this 
confusion  their  drowsy  syrups,  but  earnestness  and  honesty  will 
know  the  evil  and  its  cause  and  will  find  an  appropriate  cure. 

Never  was  a  generation  of  scholars  called  to  so  grave  or  high 
a  mission.  In  the  orderly  progress  of  the  world  in  times  that 
are  past,  civilization  has  been  slow  paced,  and  her  devotees 
could  tell  from  the  sure  footing  of  to-day  the  appropriate  and 
fitting  step  for  to-morrow.  But  the  century  which  is  drawing 
to  a  close  has  been  a  succession  of  wonders  in  physical  and  in- 
tellectual life,  it  has  leaped  with  wondering  rapidity  until  we  are 
farther  away  from  the  eighteenth  century,  than  it  was  from  the 
fifteenth,  and  in  all  the  experience  of  the  past  there  is  no  unmis- 
takable Pharos  to  guide  us  in  the  imminent  and  expanding  future. 

272380 


38 

We  are  still  experimenting    with  goverment   and   with  our   feet 
occupying  new  and  hitherto  untrodden  fields. 

The  earth  and  man  are  alike  in  a  transition  state  and  the  world 
is  young.  Indifferent  to  the  historic  processes  of  creation  its 
incompleteness  is  apparent,  there  is  no  rest  in  its  ever  increas- 
ing momentum,  and  its  onward  march  changing  alike  natural 
and  artificial  conditions  is  ever  presenting  new  problems  for 
scientific  solution.  Our  best  social  and  economic  inventions  are 
but  adaptations  to  temporary  conditions  destined  to  become  ob- 
solete when  those  existing  conditions  have  passed  away.  Our 
visions  are  so  narrow,  and  historic  existence  so  short,  we 
dwell  so  much  on  what  is  and  what  has  been,  that  we  are  in- 
capable of  comprehending  that  which  is  to  be.  We  never  think 
of  the  world  when  progression  has  reached  its  outmost  farthest 
verge,  when  every  rood  of  the  habitable  globe  shall  be  strained 
to  its  utmost  capacity  and  man  shall  limit  his  needs  to  utmost 
parsimony,  that  on  this  orb  the  countless  throng  may  live.  Then 
human  solicitude  will  watch  with  vivid  intentness,  production 
and  consumption,  for  betwden  them  there  will  be  no  margin. 
For  the  daily  production  of  prolific  and  benignant  nature  there  will 
be  urgent  and  instant  need.  It  would  be  an  absorbing  enquiry 
to  ascertain  the  probable  influence  of  these  conditions  upon  our 
intellectual  and  physical  life,  what  modification  of  morals  may 
be  probable,  and  what  revolutions  will  occur  in  our  social  exis- 
tence. That  when  the  myriad  of  people  who  then  exist  upon 
this  orb,  testing  it  to  its  utmost  capacity  shall  be  confronted 
each  with  the  other,  human  existence  will  be  difficult,  will  re- 
quire sacrifice,  deference,  industry,  economy  and  forethought 
beyond  an3'thing  now  deemed  possible  is  apparent  to  the  dullest 
observation.  When  every  form  of  dissipation  and  vice  shall 
have  been  abandoned,  and  every  rood  of  land  and  sea  yields 
its  utmost  to  the  hand  of  toil,  when  human  existence  is  limited 
by  the  incapacity  of  the  earth  to  yield  more,  it  will  have  reached 
its  normal  condition  and  the  world  will  be  ripe.  What  will  oc- 
cur beyond  this  completeness  is  beyond  my  ken  if  not  beyond 
my  curiosity.  Childhood  and  age  will  engage  in  a  supreme 
struggle  to  coax  from  earth's  prolific  womb   another  crumb  to 


39 

sustain  a  life  which  else  is  doomed.  But  abounding  and  gener- 
ous nature  will  have  exhausted  her  resources  and  farther  life  is 
superfluous  on  this  earth,  for  it  there  is  no  sustenance,  no  place, 
no  home.  Then  there  will  be  no  new  continents  or  seas  to  dis- 
cover, no  unoccupied  islands  will  beckon,  no  desert  will  be  so 
barren  as  to  forbid,  there  will  be  no  frontier  to  press  or  cross,  no 
States  to  found,  no  gardens  to  lure. 

Tropic  and  frozen  zone  alike  will  yield  their  best  and  cavern 
and  sky  will  alike  be  coaxed  to  become  benignant  ministers  to 
human  existence.  There  will  remain  a  giant  struggle  to  be. 
It  is  not  given  us  to  know  through  what  eeons  ot  ages  this  orb 
will  swing  in  space  bearing  on  its  surface  its  myriad  of  tragedies 
and  in  their  contemplation  the  human  mind  is  appalled.  Awed 
by  so  vast  a  perspective  and  so  remote  a  view  the  human  mind 
refuses  to  continue  the  enquiry  and  shrinks  from  its  contempla- 
tion. We  are  repelled  from  a  vision  which  reveals  only  a  dull  un- 
varying monotonous  condition  of  human  endurance  and  with 
infinite  gladness  we  turn  to  the  Here  and  Now  where  hidden 
forces  of  nature  are  being  discovered  and  applied,  where  con- 
quest invites,  where  human  conditions  are  ameliorated,  where 
accumulation  rewards  and  man  leaves  his  impress  on  the  moral 
and  physical  world,  where  in  short,  there  is  achievement,  con- 
quest and  individual  gratification. 

And  it  is  this  very  velocity  of  a  New  World  rapidly  de- 
veloping itself  under  the  guide  of  high  intellectual  activity  that 
presents  to  us  the  strange  and  momentous  difficulties  we  are 
called  upon  to  solve.  I  speak  not  of  political  modifications  and 
changes,  nor  dwell  upon  the  hackneyed  and  trite  theme  of  a 
new  system  of  government,  inaugurated  by  our  fathers  and 
based  upon  the  inalienable  rights  of  men.  They  are  subjects 
perpetually  discussed  and  no  element  entering  into  them  is  likely 
to  escape  observation.  The  discovery  of  continents  and  islands 
and  their  occupancy,  the  creation  of  new  wants  and  new  indus- 
tries, the  inventive  genius  which  finds  expression  in  rapid  transit, 
which  has  brought  the  four  corners  of  the  earth  together,  and 
the  consequent  intermingling  of  ideas  and  principles  and  pro- 
jects, has  devolved  upon  this  democracy,  problems,  before  which 


40 

courage  itself  would  almost  pale.  The  lessons  of  yesterday 
are  not  the  illuminations  of  tomorrow,  for  new  conditions  make 
them  uninstructive,  and  they  are  inapphcable  and  unreliable  as 
guides.  As  the  problems  are  new,  the  examination  of  them 
must  be  original,  and  our  thinking  cannot  be  the  routine  think- 
ing of  former  times.  We  shall  learn  as  much  by  contrast  as  by 
comparison,  as  much  by  the  pursuit  of  abstract  truth  as  by  ob- 
servation of  concrete  instances.  Prudence  and  foresight  are 
supreme  duties,  and  that  which  fits  us  for  these  is  an  invaluable 
possession. 

Philosophers  have  differed  as  to  the  meaning  of  these  strange 
impulses  v  hich  have  seized  the  people  of  modern  times,  notabl}^ 
in  our  own  land,  which  find  expression  in  the  creation  of  un- 
numbered civic  and  secret  societies,  each  professing  some  sort 
of  amelioration  of  human  conditions.  The  optimist  finds  in  them 
manisfestations  of  large  friendliness  and  fellowship,  and  a  desire 
on  the  part  of  each  to  be  useful  to  all  of  his  particular  craft, 
and  the  pessimist  sees  nothing  in  them  but  social  disintegration  and 
the  promise  of  disorder.  Each  probably  exaggerates  the  con- 
sequence of  these  manifestations,  but  no  imputation  can  rest 
upon  the  purpose  of  the  actors  in  so  strange  an  evolution. 

With  excepiions  too  puerile  and  exotic  to  justify  mention,  the 
impulse  of  these  people  is  manly  and  good.  They  desire  good 
government,  the  diminution  of  human  suffering,  the  mainte- 
ance  of  public  order,  and  they  think  they  see  outside  of  these 
particular  societies  indifference  to  the  welfare  of  their  particu- 
lar functions.  If  they  do  not  appreciate  that  political  societies 
secret  in  character  are  a  threat  to  democratic  institutions,  they 
will  soon  learn  that  great  truth,  and  bring  all  their  propositions 
and  discussions  to  the  light  of  day. 

Within  the  memory  of  many  of  us,  in  school  and  at  church, 
at  the  fireside  and  on  the  forum,  the  supreme  lesson  sought  to 
be  taught  was  that  scholarship  was  essential  to  statesmanship, 
that  no  person  was  fitted  to  deal  with  large  themes  affecting- 
multitudes  of  men,  who  had  not  been  enlightened  by  history 
and  philosophv,  and  who  had  not  a  sincere  and  earnest  desire  to 
promote  the  welfare  of  his  fellow  man.     We  learned  this  lesson 


4^ 

as  pupils  in  school,  as  lisping  children  at  our  mother's  knee,  and 
evjry  observation  and  event  in  life  justifies  the  storv  and  makes 
it  the  most  impressive  lesson  of  the  time.  It  stood  unchallenged 
and  supreme,  swaying  all  thought  and  truth,  to  which  every  in- 
telligence rendered  willing  and  gladsome  homage.  But  in  the 
mutations  of  time  and  the  accidents  of  fortune  here  in  the 
United  States,  commenced  a  physical  struggle,  compared  with 
which  all  former  struggles  pale  into  insignificance.  The  de- 
mand of  the  time  was  for  men  of  iron  with  nerves  of  steel  ;  to 
them  all  eyes  looked  anxiously,  and  bid  them  welcome  and 
although  the  strife  which  gave  them  prominence  has  passed  awa}', 
the  impress  of  their  consequence  has  survived  the  period  of 
their  importance,  and  we  live  in  forgetfulness  of  the  fact,  that 
the  times  call  again  as  loudly  as  before,  for  scholarship,  for 
philosophy,  for  friendly  affection  for  the  institutions  that  are  to 
be  moulded  and  shaped,  so  as  best  to  promote  human  happi- 
ness.    Some  poet  has  lamented  : 

"In  the  old  days  (a  custom  laid  aside)    with   breeches  and 

cocked  hats,  the  people  sent 
Their  wisest  men  to  make  the  public  laws." 

And  if  this  is  an  exaggeration,  it  nevertheless  has  in  it  a  sub- 
stratum of  truth.  We  are  sought  to  be  mislead  from  our  inter- 
est by  the  plea  that  government  is  business,  and  that  it  may  be 
trusted  to  business  men,  by  which  phrase  we  mean,  money- 
getters,  and  so  it  has  occurred,  and  is  occurring,  that  men  whose 
lives  and  thoughts  and  aims  are  the  making  of  money,  have 
charge  in  greater  or  lesser  numbers  of  the  most  delicate 
mechanism  ever  submitted  to  the  ingenuity,  care  and  handiwork 
of  man. 

That  under  such  circumstances  men  are  forgotten  in  public 
affairs  and  money  is  remembered  with  admiring  solicitude  need 
not  be  esteemed  strange.  The  best  men  will  take  direction  and 
form  and  their  actions  will  comport  with  the  avocations  which 
they  pursue,  the  ambitions  which  are  personal  to  them,  the 
hopes  which  they  desire  to  have  in  their  own  instance  fulfilled. 
Not  all  of  us  have  the  time  or  talent  tor  study,  not  all  of  us   in 


42 

the  exacting  demands  of  this  work-a-day  world  can  grasp  the 
influences  that  enter  into  wise  legislation,  and  all  of  us  can  see 
that  the  drift  of  our  modern  life  is  in  the  rapid  augmentation  of 
material  good  and  a  distribution  of  it  seemingly  unfair,  and  all 
of  us  can  see  that  the  tendencies  of  the  time  are  to  magnify 
this  money,  to  add  to  its  potency  in  our  social  and  political  life, 
and  to  attribute  to  those  who  possess  it  qualities  not  unlike  the 
divinities  of  ancient  mythology.  If  governmental  action  is  to 
be  approached  on  sordid  planes,  it  must  be  apparent  to  the  dul- 
lest observation  that  there  can  be  no  civic  pride,  and  civic  pride 
is  the  impulse  of  patriotism  the  minister  of  morality,  the  assur- 
ance of  fidelity  to  all  the  great  interests  submitted  to  its  care- 
As  we  are  limiting  and  annihilating  the  wide  unoccupied  pub- 
lic domain  which  remained  for  so  many  years  a  safet}  valve  for 
superfluous  population  and  a  theatre  for  incoherent  vagaries, 
society  rapidly  crystallizes  and  becomes  assorted,  and  social 
order  ultimately  presses  harshly  upon  some  classes  of  our  peo- 
ple that  before  could  find  ample  relief,  now  denied.  Probably 
no  circumstance  of  our  lives  has  exercised  so  supreme  an  in- 
fluence upon  physical  existence  as  transportation  furnished  by 
steam.  It  has  torn  down  and  built  up  cities,  it  has  burdened  or 
helped  communities  and  States,  it  has  made  intelligence  well 
nigh  universal,  particularly  that  form  of  intelligence  which  re- 
sults from  knowledge  of  human  activities  and  which  is  superfi- 
cial learning.  But  we  must  not  forget  that  such  observation  of 
men  in  proportion  as  it  makes  men  confident,  invites  them  to 
deal  lightly  with  grave  issues,  for  it  magnifies  the  individual  and 
minimizes  the  community,  and  laws  must  have  regard  to  the 
community,  and  be  justified  from  considerations  affecting  the 
masses  rather  than  individuals. 

"Shallow  drafts  intoxicate  the  brain. 
But  drinking  deeply  sobers  us  again." 
The  story  of  the  past  centuries  is  a  weary  vision,  it  is  de- 
formed by  wars,  by  ignorance,  by  superstition.  It  presents  the 
anomaly  of  uncounted  millions  governed  by  force  of  the  few,  a 
pyramid  upon  its  apex,  maintained  through  weary  years  of  suf- 
fering, disorder  and  shame. 


43 

And  now  that  dennociatic  institutions  have  a  secure  foothold 
on  all  the  continents,  and  are  working  the  sure  disintegration  of 
absolutism,  what  grave  questions  have  we  in  these  United  States, 
and  in  this  Commonwealth  confronting  us  ?  What  danger^  seem 
imminent  in  the  future,  against  what  perils  must  we  guard,  what 
remedies  shall  we  prescribe  for  threatened  evils  ?  These  ques- 
tions address  themselves  to  scholarship,  and  to  the  patriotism  of 
all  our  people.  For  we  cannot  escape  these  perils  by  blindly 
shutting  our  eyes  to  them,  and  he  must  be  thrice  blind  who  can- 
not see  in  the  intellectual  tumult  around  us  portents  of  evil. 
Economic  disorders,  political  disturbances,  social  disintegration, 
challenges  of  the  right  of  Government  itself  to  be,  and  all  these 
multiplied,  and  that  too  in  a  country  whose  corner  stone  is  that 
the  people  themselves  shall  rule. 

Perhaps  no  individual  has  voiced  more  despairingly  the  pos- 
sibilities in  store  for  a  democracy,  than  did  Lord  Macaulay,  a 
generation  ago  in  his  letter  to  Mr.  Randall,  the  author  of  the 
life  of  Jefferson.     He  said  : 

"You  are  surprised  to  learn  that  I  have  not  a  high  opinion  of 
Mr.  Jefferson,  and  I  am  surprised  at  your  surprise.  I  am  cer- 
tain that  I  never  wrote  a  line,  and  that  I  never,  in  Parliament,  in 
conversation,  or  even  on  the  hustings — a  place  where  it  is  the 
fashion  to  flatter  the  populace — uttered  a  word  indicating  an 
opinion  that  the  supreme  authority  in  a  state  ought  to  be  en- 
trusted to  the  majority  of  citizens  told  by  the  head  ;  in  other 
words,  to  the  poorest  and  most  ignorant  part  of  society.  I  have 
long  been  convinced  that  institutions  purely  democratic,  must 
sooner  or  later,  destroy  liberty  or  civilization,  or  both.  In  Europe, 
where  the  population  is  dense,  the  effect  of  such  institutions 
would  be  almost  instantaneous.  What  happened  lately  in  France 
IS  an  example.  In  1848  a  pure  democracy  was  estabhshed  there. 
During  a  short  time  there  was  reason  to  expect  a  general  spoli- 
ation, a  national  bankruptcy,  a  usurpation  of  the  soil,  a  maxuDum 
of  prices,  a  ruinous  load  of  taxation  laid  on  the  rich  for  the  pur- 
pose of  supporting  the  poor  in  idleness.  Such  a  system  would, 
in  twenty  years,  have  made  France  as  poor  and  barbarous  as 
the   France   of    the   Carlovingians.      Happily,  the   danger   was 


44 

averted  ;  and  now  there  is  despotism,  a  silent  tribune,  an  en- 
slaved press.  Liberty  is  gone,  but  civilization  has  been  saved. 
I  have  not  the  smallest  doubt,  that  if  we  had  a  purely  demo- 
cratic government  here  the  effect  would  be  the  same.  Either 
the  poor  would  plunder  the  rich,  and  civilization  would  perish 
or  order  and  prosperity  would  be  saved  by  strong  military  gov- 
ernment, and  liberty  would  perish. 

You  may  think  that  your  country  enjoys  an  exemption  from 
these  evils.  I  will  frankly  own  to  you  that  I  am  of  a  very  differ- 
ent opinion.  Your  fate  I  believe  to  be  certain,  though  it  is  de- 
ferred by  physical  causes  as  long  as  you  have  a  boundless  ex- 
tent of  fertile  and  unoccupied  land,  your  laboring  population 
will  be  far  more  at  ease  than  the  laboring  population  of  the  Old 
World,  and,  while  that  is  the  case,  the  Jefferson  politics  may 
continue  to  exist  without  causing  any  fatal  calamity.  But  the 
time  will  come  when  New  England  will  be  as  thickly  peopled  as 
Old  England.  Wages  will  be  as  low,  and  will  fluctuate  as  much 
with  you  as  with  us.  You  will  have  your  Manchesters  and 
your  Birminghams,  and  in  those  Manchesters  and  Birminghams 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  artisans  will  assuredly  be  sometimes 
out  of  work.  Then  your  institutions  will  be  fairly  brought  to 
the  test.  Distress  everywhere  makes  the  laborer  mutinous  and 
discontented,  and  inclines  him  to  listen  with  eagerness  to  agita- 
tors who  tell  him  that  it  is  monstrous  iniquity  that  one  man 
should  have  a  million,  while  another  cannot  get  a  full  meal.  In 
bad  years  there  is  plenty  of  grumbling  here,  and  sometimes  a 
little  rioting.  But  it  matters  little.  For  here  the  sufferers  are 
not  the  rulers.  The  supreme  power  is  in  the  hands  of  a  class, 
numerous  indeed,  but  select  ;  of  an  educational  class  ;  of  a  class 
which  is,  and  knows  itself  to  be,  deeply  interested  in  the  secur- 
ity of  property  and  the  maintenance  of  order.  Accordingly 
the  malcontents  are  firmly  yet  gently  restrained.  The  bad  time 
is  got  over  without  robbing  the  wealthy  to  relieve  the  indigent. 
The  springs  of  National  prosperity  soon  begin  to  flow  again, 
work  is  plentiful,  wages  rise,  and  all  is  tranquility  and  cheerful- 
ness. I  have  seen  England  pass  three  or  four  times  through 
such  critical  seasons  as  I  have  described.     Through    such    sea- 


45 

sons  the  United  States  will  have  to  pass  in  the  course  of  the 
next  century,  if  not  of  this.  How  will  you  pass  through  themr 
I  heartily  wish  you  a  good  deliverance.  But  my  reason  and  my 
wishes  are  at  war,  and  I  cannot  help  foreboding  the  worst.  It 
is  quite  plain  that  your  Government  will  never  be  able  to  re- 
strain a  distressed  and  discontented  majority.  For  with  you  the 
majority  is  the  Government,  and  has  the  rich,  who  are  always  a 
minority  absolutely  at  its  mercy.  The  day  will  come  when  in 
the  State  of  New  York  a  multitude  of  people,  none  of  whom 
has  had  more  than  half  a  breakfast,  or  expects  to  have  more 
than  half  a  dinner,  will  choose  a  legislature.  Is  it  possible  to 
doubt  what  sort  of  a  legislature  will  be  chosen  ?  On  one  side 
is  the  Statesman  preaching  patience,  respect  for  vested  rights, 
strict  observance  of  public  faith.  On  the  other  is  a  demagogue 
ranting  about  the  tyranny  of  capitalists  and  usurers,  and  asking 
why  anybody  should  be  permitted  to  drink  champagne  and  to 
ride  in  a  carriage,  while  thousands  of  honest  folks  are  in  want  of 
necessaries.  Which  of  the  two  candidates  is  likely  to  be  pre- 
ferred by  a  working  man  who  hears  his  children  cry  for  more 
bread  ?  I  seriously  apprehend  that  you  will,  in  some  such  sea- 
son of  adversity  as  I  have  described,  do  things  which  will  pre- 
vent prosperity  from  returning  ;  that  you  will  act  like  people 
who  should  in  a  year  of  scarcity  devour  all  the  seed-corn,  and 
thus  make  the  next  a  year  not  of  scarcity,  but  of  absolute  la- 
mine.  There  will  be,  I  fear,  spoliation.  The  spoliation  will  in- 
crease the  distress,  the  distress  will  produce  fresh  spoliation. 
There  is  nothing  to  s^op  you.  Your  Constitution  is  all  sail  and 
no  anchor.  As  I  said  before,  when  society  has  entered  on  this 
downward  progress,  either  civilization  or  liberty  must  perish. 
Either  some  Csesar  or  Napoleon  will  seize  the  reins  of  Gov- 
ernment with  a  strong  hand  or  your  RepubHc  will  be  as  fearfully 
plundered  and  laid  waste  by  barbarians  in  the  twentieth  century 
as  the  Roman  Empire  was  in  the  fifth  ;  with  this  difference, 
that' the  Huns  and  Vandals  who  ravaged  the  Roman  Empire 
came  from  without,  and  that  your  Huns  and  Vandals  will  have 
been  engendered  within  your  own  country  by  your  own  institu- 
tions. 


46 

Thinking  thus,  of  course  I  cannot  reckon  Jefferson  among  the 
benefactors  of  mankind.  I  readily  admit  that  his  intentions 
were  good,  and  his  abihties  considerable." 

}Iow  Macaulay  in  this  letter  but  echoed  the  fears  of  that  pa- 
triotic and  splendid  democrat  Edmund  Burke,  who  two  genera- 
tions before  had  misread  the  occasional  excess  and  wild  Justice 
of  the  French  Revolution  and  had  thereby  been  driven  from  his 
integrity  of  judgment  manifested  in  so  many  exigencies  of 
human  history  and  which  in  spite  of  this  defection  has  written 
high  his  name  among  the  benefactors  of  mankind.  The  story 
of  the  French  Revolution  perverted  distorted  and  uncompre- 
hended  has  done  large  service  to  monarchs,  but  its  errand  for 
that  purpose  is  closed. 

Lord  Macaulay,  in  this  extract  which  I  have  read  in  your 
hearing  seemed  to  think  that  education  did  not  keep  pace  with 
responsibilities,  and  that  patriotism  is  not  a  perpetually  in- 
creasing impulse,  that  the  possessors  of  money,  however 
sordid,  would  not  possess  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  and 
diligently  enquire  how  best  to  protect  themselves,  and  would 
not  answer  an  inquiry  so  supreme  to  them  by  providing  for 
the  education  and  comfort  of  the  masses  of  the  people  into 
whose  hands  such  grave  trusts  are  confided.  As  if  the  very 
form  of  government  was  not  an  assurance  that  the  experience 
of  Manchester  and  Birmingham  was  not  possible  in  a  democracy, 
that  the  condition  and  forces  of  labor  and  capital  were  seem- 
ingly rather  than  really  hostile,  that  the  profits  of  each  in  the 
long  run  and  over  the  whole  era  must  be  divided  among  all,  and 
this  too  without  cataclysm  or  tumult,  but  as  the  outgrowth  of  a 
correct  comprehension  of  their  relations  to  each  other.  He  did 
not  seem  to  realize  that  evils  must  grow  to  certain  dimensions 
before  they  are  adequately  defined  and  a  remedy  prescribed, 
and  he  forgot  the  inexorable  certainty  with  which  a  democracy 
applies  the  remedy  to  every  evil  which  the  times  reveal.  He 
did  not  appreciate  how  education  cultivates  the  virtue  of  pa- 
tience, or  the  confidence  which  a  great  people  feels  in  its  own 
adequacy  and  its  capacity  to  deal  with  every  evolution  and  de- 
velopment that  calls  for  public  action.      If  ignorance   is  to   pre- 


47 

vail,  if  partial  wisdom  is  only  here  and  there  to  exist,  the  calam- 
ities which  he  foretells  are  not  onl}  probable  but  assured. 

But  the  institution  whose  anniversary  today  we  celebrate, 
with  all  its  related  institutions  wherever  civilization  and  democra- 
cy plant  their  footsteps,  are  assurances  of  the  probabilities  of 
the  existence  of  this  form  of  government  so  long  as  Time  en- 
dures. Indeed  recalling  all  that  has  transpired  in  our  own  Re- 
public and  in  other  Republics  since  Lord  Macaulay's  letter  was 
written,  showing  the  adequacy  and  omnipotence  of  democracy, 
it  would  be  interesting  to  have  a  second  letter  prognosticating 
the  future  of  democracy  from  the  mind  which  foretold  its  early 
destruction  so  graphically  36  years  ago. 

For  if  there  is  one  assurance  doubly  assured,  it  is  that  dem- 
ocratic institutions  are  on  this  earth  to  sta}',  that  they  year  by 
year  are  gathering  strength,  that  their  influence  is  widening," 
that  no  government  is  so  absolute  or  monarchical  but  that  it  has 
been  permeated  with  the  spirft  of  democracy,  and  no  circum- 
stance can  be  foretold  with  more  certainty  than  tha't  in  the  not 
remote  future,  emperors  and  kings  will  live  only  in  story  and 
song.  Wiser  was  the  apprehension  of  the  great  poet  Laureate 
who  found  his  assurance  of  the  perpetuity  of  the  British  con- 
stitution in  the  fact,  that  it  was 

"Broad  based  upon  a  people's  will." 

Not  unlike  the  prophesies  of  Lord  Macaulay  was  the  forecast 
of  Charles  Fourier  a  century  ago,  he,  tracing  the  growth  of 
Nations,  its  iijfluence  upon  individual  thought  and  action,  and  the 
successive  steps  from  the  rudest  beginning  to  a  complete  indus- 
trial and  economic  condition,  pictured  the  misfortune  which  must 
attend  the  final  evolution  of  industrial  Hfe  as  to  four  phases 
which  that  civilization  would  assume.  This  observer  of  men 
and  discoverer  of  influences  which  actu?ite  them  has  not  had 
justice  rendered  to  his  labors  or  his  memory,  because  of  the 
crudeness  of  som<-  of  the  remedies  for  social  evils  which  were 
by  him  proposed.  He  seems  in  a  larger  sense  than  Macaulay 
to  have  traced  the  influences  of  economic  crystallization  to  their 
ultimate  realization  and  described  those  consequences  with  great 
perspicuity.     He  said  : 


48 

"Civilization  is  tending  toward  the  fourth  phase,  by  the  influ- 
ence of  Joint  Stock  Corporations,  which,  under  the  cover  of 
certain  legal  privileges  dictate  terms  and  conditions  to  labor,  and 
arbitrarily  exclude  from  it  whomsoever  they  pleased.  These  cor- 
porations contain  the  germ  of  a  vast  feudal  coalition  which  is 
destined  soon  to  invade  the  whole  industrial  and  financial  system, 
and  give  birth  to  a  commercial  feudalism,  *  *  *  *  These  cor- 
porations will  become  dangerous  and  lead  to  new  outbreaks  and 
convulsions,  only  by  being  extended  to  the  whole  commercial 
and  industrial  system.  The  event  is  not  far  distant,  and  will  be 
brought  about  all  the  more  easily  from  the  fact  that  it  is  not  ap- 
prehended. *  *  *  *  Extremes  meet  ;  and  the  greater  the  ex- 
tent to  which  anarchical  competition  is  carried  the  nearer  is  the 
approach  to  the  reign  of  universal  monopoly,  which  is  the  oppo- 
site excess.  It  is  the  fate  of  civilization  to  be  always  balancing 
between  extremes.  Circumstances  are  tending  toward  the  or- 
ganization of  the  commercial  classes  into  federal  companies  or 
affiHated  monopolies,  which,  operating  in  conjunction  with  the 
great  landed  interests,  will  reduce  tne  middle  and  laboring  clas- 
ses to  a  state  of  commercial  vassalage,  and  by  the  influence  of 
combined  action  will  become  master  of  the  productive  industry, 
of  entire  nations.  The  small  operators  will  be  forced  indirectly 
to  dispose  of  their  products  according  to  the  wishes  of  these 
monopolists  ;  they  will  become  mere  agents  for  the  coalition. 
We  shall  thus  see  the  re-appearance  of  feudalism  m  an  inverse 
order,  founded  on  mercantile  leagues,  and  answering  to  the  bar- 
onial leagues  of  the  middle  ages.  Everything  is  concurring  to 
produce  this  result.  *  *  *  We  are  marching  with  rapid  strides 
toward  a  commercial  feudalism,  and  to  the  fourth  phase  of  civ- 
ilization." 

Having  regard  to  the  statements  by  these  respective  philos- 
ophers of  the  ultimate  destiny  of  government  and  condition  of 
mankind,  we  should  be  compelled  to  acknowledge  their  justness 
if  we  did  not  comprehend  the  ever  widening  sphtre  of  human 
knowledge,  the  ever-increasing  fidelity  of  the  common  people 
to  the  institutions  of  government,  and  now  upon  a  retrospection 
of   these  prophesies  of   evil,  it   is   apparent  that  the   threats  of 


49 

disorder  and  disintegration  were  manifold  greater  in  arbitrary 
or  monarchical  governments  thar:  in  democracies.  For  when  a 
timeshall  come  pictured  with  so  much  lucidity  by  Lord  Macau- 
lay,  that  hunger  or  imperative  human  needs  shall  be  the  control- 
ling impulse  of  men,  it  will  be  a  question  of  numerical  and  phy- 
sical force  to  which  all  power  must  bow.  There  will  be  no  awe 
of  nobility,  no  awe  of  royalty,  when  hunger  seizes  the  majority 
of  mankind.  If  such  a  period  should  arrive,  monarchies  would 
be  useless,  and  property  itself  inconsequential.  For  accumu- 
lated capital  could  not  hope  to  withstand  so  supreme  a  trial.  It 
is  a  just  judgment  in  my  view  which  holds,  that  democratic  gov- 
ernment administered  by  an  educated  and  intelligent  people  is 
now  and  will  then  remain  the  only  security  which  capital  will  have. 
Indeed  human  needs  and  accumulated  wealth  in  democracies 
will  never  lock  horns,  if  government  be  administered  on  princi- 
ples which  make  accumulated  capital  as  against  wide  spread 
hunger  impossible.  And  if  it  shall  seem  that  in  these  Itjler  days 
events  contradict  this  statement,  we  must  remember  that  we  are 
only  at  one  period  in  the  stage  of  this  development,  that  schol- 
arship is  busied,  with  considerations  which  make  the  solution  of 
this  contention  probable,  and  that  in  the  order  of  nature  harmony 
between  all  classes  and  conditions  will  certainly  be  evolved.  The 
pressure  of  the  circumstances  foreseen  by  the  great  historian  is 
not  yet  powerful,  but  public  attention  is  turned  to  their  solution 
with  an  unanimity  and  intelligence  that  makes  the  catastrophe 
which  he  apprehends  impossible.  The  evolution  of  our  indus- 
trial life  presents  other  themes  equally  important  and  arrests  the 
attention  of  the  student  of  political  economy  with  a  seriousness 
fully  equal  to  ^the  one  so  graphically  described.  We  are 
confronted  to-day  by  an  inquiry  touching  not  wholly  the  question 
as  to  who  shall  have  accumulated  wealth,  but  vvhat  new  energy 
or  life  shall  be  put  into  money  at  the  expense  ot  the  individual. 
We  are  compelled  to  ask  what  is  the  sovereignty  of  a  State  and 
to  whom  of  right  does  its  exercise  belong  ?  Is  it  capable  of 
diminuiion  or  division  ?  Is  it  wise  to  farm  it  out  to  favored  citi- 
zens ? 

Is  it  scientific  that  all  the  people  shall  refuse  to  exercise   the 


50 

supreme  power  for  all  the  purposes  for  which  government  among 
men  is  founded,  frightened  therefrom  by  evils  eloquently  por- 
trayed imaginative  or  real?  It  is  not  the  first  time  in  the  history 
of  government  that  the  sovereign  authority  of  a  State  has  been 
farmed  out  to  its  citizens.  The  revenues  of  ancient  empires 
were  farmed  to  distinguished  individuals,  they  paying  to  the  pub- 
lic treasurer  a  fixed  amount  for  the  privilege  of  collecting  the 
taxes  in  certain  provinces.  That  experiment  wrought  upon  these 
Empn-es  overwhelming  disaster.  It  scandahzed  government  and 
historic  names,  and  wrote  its  inexorable  result  in  faction  and  dis- 
order and  civil  war.  That  form  of  dividing  sovereignty  has 
ceased  in  civilized  nations,  but  in  other  forms  we  have  abdicated 
sovereignty  and  transferred  it  to  individuals  with  a  frequency 
and  freedom  unknown  in  the  ancient  times.  Its  subtle  influence 
almost  imperceptible  in  its  beginning  has  become  so  widespread 
and  potent  that  it  almost  defies  the  State,  and  a  recent  article  in 
a  current  number  of  one  of  our  leading  reviews,  proposed  im- 
pudently and  with  gravity  to  reform  politics  on  lines  which  shall 
hold  that  the  fragmentary  sovereignty  which  we  have  farmed 
out  to  our  citizens  shall  control  and  govern  the  sovereignty 
which  remains. 

Learning  abashed  at  no  audacity  will  proceed  to  enquire  in  the 
light  of  past  experiences  and  of  philosophy  herself  whether  we 
have  not  in  this  respect  travelled  forbidden  paths.  She  will  pro- 
ceed to  strip  from  arrogant  pretense  the  sophistry  by  which  she 
attempts'to  bolster  up  her  authority  and  will  remorselessly  ex- 
pose to  all  the  people  the  functions  and  duties  of  government 
without  fear,  without  favor  or  bias  of  any  kind.  We  shall  know 
as  the  result  of  her  inquiries  whether  the  sovereignty  of  the 
State  is  for  all  of  the  people  or  for  favored  sons.  She  will 
know  what  advantages  we  have  already  given  whereby  they 
who  wield  this  most  supreme  majesty  are  enabled  to  oppress  and 
burden  those  not  thus  favored,  and  she  will  be  deluded  by  no 
names.  In  whatever  disguise  men  seek  to  cover  up  their  pos- 
sessions and  title  to  a  part  of  the  supreme  power  and  justify 
their  "right  to  exercise  it,  she  will  know  whether  the  fact  itself 
exists,  and  whether  if  it  does  exist  it  can  be  justified. 


51 

Other  questions  obtrude  themselves  upon  the  Nation  of  equal 
consequence  and  require  the  most  patient  consideration.  How 
shall  we  deal  with  anomalous  populations  flocking  lo  our  shores 
in  larg-e  numbers,  who,  by  reason  of  religious  differences  or  ir- 
religion,  or  diverse  habitudes  and  experience,  or  by  different 
ambitions  or  want  of  ambition,  refuse  to  assimilate  with  our  peo- 
ple, and  project  into  the  Republic  a  force  foreign  to  its  quality 
and  aim,  to  become  therein  a  festering  sore.  How  deal  with 
anomalous  populations  native  to  our  soil,  not  yet  in  sympathy 
with  our  moral  or  intellectual  life?  These  questions  press  for 
solution,  and  ignorance  and  dogmatism  arrogate  to  themselves 
the  right  to  determine  them  on  lines  of  hatred  and  prejudice, 
from  considerations  of  narrow  and  selfish  personal  interest  rather 
than  philosophically  and  in  the  light  of  the  elements  which  enter 
into  so  grave  a  discussion.  The  relation  of  accumulated  labor, 
which  is  capital,  to  labor  not  yet  resultant,  the  frictions  which 
are  therefrom  produced,  press  themselves  upon  our  attention, 
and  must  be  intelligently  and  justly  solved.  This  cannot  be 
done  by  force  and  its  resultant  passions,  nor  yet  can  the  wrongs 
of  labor  be  righted  by  enforced  idleness,  harmful  alike  to  every 
interest  involved. 

May  we  refuse  to  submit  the  State  to  the  control  of  its  intel- 
ligence and  morality  because  of  sex  ?  What  material  shall  be 
recognized  as  the  measure  of  values  thereto  recommended  by 
stability  and  universal  desire  and  preciousness?  How  shall  we 
deal  with  the  ancient  impulse  of  the  people  to  poison  themselves 
and  waste  their  needed  substance  with  intoxicants  ?  Where  shall 
we  locate  the  limit  of  Legislative  action,  controlling  the  affairs  of 
men  and  protecting  the  interests  of  all  the  people,  and  yet  avoid 
that  paternalism  which  is  an  impertinence  in  individual  affairs  ? 
How  shall  we  inspire  our  people  with  a  united  purpose  to  re- 
ward independence  of  thinking  and  to  punish  the  cringing  ser- 
vility that  holds  no  cause  so  sacred  but  that  it  is  willing  to  flatter 
the  mean  and  endorse  the  coarse  and  low  ?  How  can  we  culti- 
vate the  moral  fibre  of  men,  that  shall  lead  them  to  prefer  say- 
ing the  things  that  are  true  rather  than  the  things  that  are 
sweet  ? 


The  relations  of  men  in  the  pressure  of  increasing  population 
to  the  soil  of  the  State,  is  another  question  forced  upon  the  con- 
sideration, by  that  earth  hunger  of  our  people  which  has  in- 
duced them  in  individual  instances  to  acquire  large  areas  of  land, 
and  by  devices  from  generation  to  generation  in  effect  abolish- 
ing the  laws  forbidding  -pi-hnogeniture^  and  with  gradually  in- 
creasing area  and  value,  maintaining  in  families  these  vast  es- 
tates. Enquiry  also  into  our  system  of  taxation  from  a  scien- 
tific basis  must  answer  the  interrogations  now  gravely  addressed 
to  Legislators,  whether  the  drift  and  tendency  of  our  laws  do 
not  burden  individuals  rather  than  estates,  men  rather  than 
money,  with  the  cares  of  Government.  Out  of  the  somewhat 
kaleidoscopic  decisions  of  the  relations  of  the  State  to  its  im- 
proved highways,  science  must  evolve  a  consistent  and  coherent 
theory,  and  laws  must  be  enacted  which  shall  enforce  that  theory 
against  the  greed  and  ambitions  of  men  with  absolute  and  inex- 
orable justice. 

The  heritage  of  liberty  bequeathed  by  our  fathers  must  be 
shielded  against  threatened  evils  insiduously  assailing  it  under 
the  guise  of  churchly  solicitude  or  other  plausible  pretexts  and 
scholarship  is  taxed  ever  to  its  utmost  tension  to  solve  these  and 
kindred  questions.  For  she  may  not  shirk  the  care  of  all  these 
great  and  varied  interests  whether  they  pertain  to  morals  or  money. 
There  is  devolved  upon  her  the  care  of  the  capital  of  the  State, 
for  it  is  largely  her  creation.  It  is  the  accumulated  achieve- 
ments of  science,  the  result  of  toilsome  labor  in  laboratories  and 
libraries  that  constitute  the  vast  portion  of  human  possessions 
which  our  inventive  genius  has  created  for  mankind. 

If  you  shall  examine  the  compendium  of  the  Eleventh  Census 
of  the  United  States,  and  contrast  it  with  the  first,  you  will  be 
amazed  to  see  the  growth  of  the  country  in  this  one  regard.  At 
the  opening  of  the  present  century,  land  and  ships  and  cattle 
constituted  nearly  all  the  wealth  of  the  State,  and  its  people,  but 
since  then,  men  of  affairs  have  taken  the  discoveries  of  science, 
the  results  of  the  labors  of  scholars,  and  have  adapted  them  to 
human  needs,  until  one  stands  appalled  at  the  magnitude  of  val- 
ues resulting  therefrom.     And  having  thus    created    so    vast    a 


53 

mass  of  values,  fulfilling  in  every  nook  and  crannv  and  in  every 
department  of  human  activity  beneficent  purposes,  certainly  the 
creators  of  it  are  charged  with  its  care. 

And  if  it  seems  from  lime  to  time  that  it  in  the  hurly-burly  of 
our  activities,  we  do  not  appreciate  liow  much  science  has  had 
to  do  with  the  augmenting  wealth  of  nations  upon  its  sordid 
side  ;  if  we  shall  hear  of  attempts  to  belittle  its  consequence  in 
this  great  struggle  of  ours,  upon  which  for  a  century  we  have 
been  engaged,  a  retrospection  of  that  century  will  vindicate  the 
truth  I  have  stated  and  place  the  world  in  appropriate  relation  to 
the  scholars  who  have  achieved  so  much.  They  have  liUed 
Milton's  conception  of  men  "inflamed  with  the  study  of  learning 
and  the  admiration  of  virtue  stirred  up  with  high  hopes,  livmg 
to  be  brave  men  and  worthy  patriots,  dear  to  God  and  famous  to 
all  ages. 

That  there  will  be  perfect  social  order  for  centuries  is  too 
much  to  hope,  but  as  it  has  been  the  fortune  of  the  United 
States  to  be  in  the  vanguard  of  democracies,  so  in  all  the  perils 
which  will  confront  them  in  time  to  come,  we  fain  would  hope 
and  confidently  believe,  that  there  will  here  be  a  benign  and  in- 
telligent and  potential  example,  teaching  the  great  lesson  that 
learning,  that  scholarship,  that  morality,  give  assurances  of  the 
perpetuity  of  Republican  Institutions.  The  School  has  a  high 
function  in  determining  the  grave  questions  which  impend  as  ii 
has  had  a  high  career  in  the  conquests  which  are  gone.  This 
young  institution  by  your  fidelity  has  a  high  companion- 
ship, and  in  contemplation  of  its  alluring  future  the  pulseless 
blood  starts  into  new  life.  Abounding  gratitude  is  due  to 
pupils  to  managers  to  patrons  to  all  who  by  deed  and  word  give 
it  strength,  courage  and  confidence  in  its  career  and  the  iron 
lids  of  sordid  dullness  sh.ill  yet  awaken  to  its  benignant  mission. 

It  I  have  not  overstated  the  mission  of  this  school  in  the 
growth  of  the  state,  its  claim  upon  the  citizens  is  certainly  su- 
preme. Their  sympathy  with  it,  their  care  of  it,  their  contribu- 
tions to  it  of  personal  sympathy  and  n-aterial  aid  is  a  command- 
ing duty.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  to  doubt  in  the  midst  of 
some  discouragements,  but  that  the  citizens  of  this  commonwealth 


54 

feel  in  this  institution  an  abiding  pride,  and  have  it  in  their  heart 
of  hearts  to  maintain  it  in  their  midst  as  part  and  parcel  of  the 
civiHzation  which  they  have  here  founded.  If  there  has  been 
apparent  indifference  to  its  welfare,  it  is  seeming  rather  than 
real.  In  guiding  a  new  community  in  an  uncrystalHzed  condi- 
tion in  the  earlier  stages  of  its  creation  and  settlement,  painful 
solicitudes  to  the  intelligent  citizen  are  found  on  every  hand. 

It  is  a  high  deed  to  plant  a  state,  and  the  actors  in  so  majestic 
an  epic,  watchful  of  all  the  tendencies  of  the  time,  and  perceiv- 
ing the  duties  which  day  by  day  devolve  and  day  by  day  change, 
are  engaged  in  a  labor  grander  than  they  know.  They  do  not 
realize  iti  the  midst  of  these  labors  and  ambitions  the  forces 
which  they  are  bringing  into  harmonious  relations  with  each 
other,  the  momentum  that  they  are  giving  to  great  causts,  nor 
how  great  the  life  they  are  living  nor  the  story  they  are  telling. 
Contrasted  with  life  in  settled  communities,  where  individual 
impress  upon  public  affairs  is  diminished  and  limited,  life  in  a 
new  country  is  an  inspiring  and  gracious  privilege. 

We  dwell  in  another  world  and  upon  other  themes  than  those 
that  fill  the  minds  of  people  in  communities  that  have  matured. 
And  the  gratifications  which  come  to  us  in  such  a  mission  un- 
spoken though  they  be,  are  nevertheless  ta^ngible  until  we  can 
exclaim  with  the  poet : 

"One  crowded  hour  of  glorious  life. 
Is  worth  an  age  without  a  name." 

My  purpose  will  not  have  been  fulfilled  in  these  words  of  con- 
gratulation at  your  environment  and  commendation  of  your  great 
institution,  unless  they  ahall  have  a  personal  application  and  in- 
fluence upon  each  pupil  and  all  connected  with  it.  For  you  are 
to  be  henceforth  the  inseparable  companions  of  this  institution 
of  learning,  and  her  good  name  is  henceforth  in  your  keeping. 
You  will  make  or  mar  that  name,  and  your  potency  over  her 
prosperity  and  in  the  affairs  of  mankind  will  be  measured  by 
your  action  and  words.  Certainly  with  such  grave  consequen- 
ces impending,  none  of  vou  can  do  or  say  a  mean  thing.  Da}^ 
by  day  you  are  called  upon  to  act  and  speak  in  the  light  of 
her  invocations  and  aspirations,  proudly  conscious  that  she   will 


55 

accompany  you  with  affectionate  solicitude  and  make  you  stronj; 
in  her  strength  through  every  vicissitude  of  your  career.  The 
board  of  trustees  which  manages  it,  the  faculty  who  are  instruc- 
tors, and  the  pupils  who  attend  upon  their  ministrations,  each 
and  all,  henceforth  are  invoked  to  high  deeds  in  her  behalf  and 
in  her  name.  For  it  is  your  action  that  is  to  surround  and  char- 
acterize this  school  and  give  it  fame  and  a  name  among  men. 
And  the  great  State  of  which  it  is  a  part  gazes  solicitously  upon 
it  and  you,  knowing  full  well  that  in  your  possession  is  a  gift  of 
pride  or  shame.  And  yonder  fair  and  thrifty  hillside  city,  confi- 
dent, lusty,  sturdy,  strong  alike  in  the  strength  of  her  history  and 
destiny,  bends  over  this  fair  institution,  showering  upon  it  every 
benediction  and  grace,  and  prophesying  and  promising  that  it 
shall  be  a  fountain  of  beneficence,  until  the  perpetual  hills  shall 
bow,  and  the  shining  stars  shall  fade  from  out  the   ancient  sky. 


mOflTflflfl   UfUVEf^SITV 


-rs   THE   BEST   HOC / J'J'lJJt- 


Boardir)(^  §e[?ool  ii)  /|\oi>ta9a, 


-AJVI)   ITS   HATES   THE   MOST  REASOSABB. 


.  .  .  BOHRD  HND  TUITION  .  .  . 

IV     I  T 'II' If  I  ft  \      i;r.'l\('lli:s    J'OJt    THE    E.\J1I!I      s(  tfooi      /.•l\i:i       iitov 
■-,.:!    lit  $'i4'i  ACCOnDiya    lU  iiU.MH   . 


Send  fop  Catalogue  to  the   Pfesident, 

F.  P.  TOCUEt^,  fl.  m.,  D.  D. 

HELENA,  (VIONTANA:^^ 

UNIVERSITY  of  CALIFORN!JP 

AT 
Tfc  AWQELES 


UCLAYoung   Research    Library 

LD3527.2    1893 

yr 


L  009  612  307  0 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA     001324  560       0 


